#dead white writer on the floor

[ningvory]

good girl — kim chaewon

g!p meangirl!chaewon x f!reader

CW: college au, the fimmies are sick perverts, public humiliation, lowkey kdrama bullying, readers a virgin and a loner, choking, blackmailing, dubcon, reader wears glasses, pussy eating, slight pussy slapping, recording, degration, dumbification, backshots, sorta public sex, voyerism

wc —> 3.1k

nabi’s messages: GUESS WHO’S OUTTA WRITERS BLOCK!? WE CHEERED!! finally on summer break so hopefully i’ll be writing more frequently 🤞🤞 uhhh also not fully proofread but when is it ever proofread!?

you hated her.

kim chaewon, the rich, gorgeous, athletically and academically talented, and of course she’s drop dead gorgeous. everyone either wanted to be her or be with her.

whenever she’d roam the halls with her clique; sakura, yunjin, and kazuha people would stare in awe but as well as fear. after all, she is the school’s bully, a wolf in sheep’s clothing you may say.

and you were her favorite target.

you, were unfortunately chaewon’s favorite person to torment ever since the first year of college. you were easily an easy target to pick on by her. your style was apparently too old and not up to date with what’s the style now and your glasses were just entirely too big for your face.

so of course you stuck out to chaewon. it was so shocking that it was basically like comedy to her that you even got in a place like this, in a crowd full of the rich. she’d mock you to her friends and it brought her to tears from how long she laughed at you cluelessly trying to figure out where your classes were. she couldn’t wait to make you her plaything in more ways than one.

the bell rang for lunchtime to start. something that you really didn’t enjoy due to the loudness of the area.

you tried finding a empty table, just so you can sit down and enjoy your meal and luckily, you found one and you sat down about 4 seats down from a group of girls

you felt eyes on you, turning your head to see who it was, meeting the eyes of a girl with short blonde hair who had a undeniable look of disgust on her face.

“who told you to sit at our table?” she scoffed, before looking you up and down. you looked at her confused, its a table? a school lunch table at that, who was she to tell you that you couldn’t sit at the table?

you rolled your eyes and ignored her, tending to your food. you kept taking bites of your food, going to unlock your phone as you heard loud giggles from besides you.

“did you hear me, bitch? who told you to sit at this table?” she smirked, snatching your phone out of your hand, making your attention go to her, trying to get your phone back.

in a swift motion, you snatched your phone out of her hands, “the fuck is wrong with you? the table is for anyone to sit at, bitch.” you remarked, giving her a judgmental look.

her smirk was completely whipped off, “are you seriously talking to me like that? you’ve got some guts, little girl.” her lips curled up into a cocky smile before she stood up and pulled your hair with a harsh grip, pulling you off the chair before she shoved you, making you loose balance and fall to the hard floor of the cafeteria. the goosebumps began to rise on your uncovered legs and arms from the coldness of the floor.

“ow— a-are you fucking crazy!?” you screamed at her, caressing the spot of hair which she pulled on, making everyone’s attention fall on you and her.

she snickered at you, looking down at you like you were some dog before she grabbed your bottle full of milk and crouched down to your height.

“tsk. next time watch who you talk to, dummy.” she speaks with that tone full of disgust and grabs your chin to look at her.

a sinister smile appears on her face watching how your face was laced with fear before she poured the milk on your head. completely soaking your body with the cold liquid, your hair that took you hours to do was ruined, your face was soak in it, your glasses had spots of milk on it, and your white uniform top was soaked and exposed your bra under your top.

all eyes were on you. you heard the sound of cameras clicking and people laughing and murmuring with their friends about how pathetic you looked shaking and drenched with milk. until chaewon arose and gave a stare that shut everyone up and divert their attention away from you.

that was the first ever encounter and was definitely not the last, especially since the teachers were so pathetically helpless. but even if they tried, she could bribe her way out of any situation she’d be put in, or she could blackmail the teachers if they ever thought about stopping her, she had everyone’s secrets.

after the first situation, it just got worse for you. it seemed like everywhere you went she was right there, it was like she was obsessed with breaking you down to nothing but her personal pet. from forcing you to do her homework or else she’d physically assault you until you complied, to dragging you out of your lesson without a care in the world to force you to get on your knees while she used your mouth to get off.

you’re currently in your junior year of college still being tormented by chaewon and her clique, you learned now that they go by ‘the fimmies’ — sometimes you liked to joke and called them ‘the dummies’ due to the fact that they force you and others to do their homework. like seriously, you can’t do the work yourself? eventually the pain they’ve inflicted on you for the past two years, you’ve grown used to it, not having the energy to fight her back as much as you did before. you’ve been given the name by the students, ‘chaewon’s feisty bitch’ or ‘the fimmies’ pet’ and everyone knows you for that, not your actual name.

now you were currently in the garden of the school, doing your homework. the only place you felt safe from chaewon and her harassment, that was until the devil herself appeared infront of you.

“yah..” she said relatively relaxed and soft, alarmingly soft. which made your blood run cold, but you ignored her, continuing to try and focus on your work.

“yah! i know you hear me, look at me.” she said, gripping onto your jaw and jerking your head to her direction.

“ow—what is it now?” you wince at her grip on your jaw, looking at her in her eyes.

“be a good girl and do my homework, since you like doing homework so much. it’s past school hours, why the fuck are you still here?” she questioned, bringing your face closer to hers.

you could ask her the same thing, it’s not like she’s in any sports or afterschool activities.

“you don’t have to be so aggressive about it..” you whine. the following silence was odd, especially when it’s chaewon, the usual bitch who makes a big deal about literally anything.

nothing was heard but the few birds chirping and the cars driving by.

“follow me.” she said completely monotones with a unreadable expression on her face, she let go of your face, letting you put your stuff in your bag, surprisingly. before she’s dragging you along to wherever she’s taking you.

—

she pushed you into a classroom, professor kim’s classroom to be exact, your favorite professor. your eyes widened with horror when you saw her usual clique in the room, laughing at your expression.

“what’s wrong, ynnie? not happy to see us?” sakura, the eldest out of the clique asked. before sadistically smiling at you, which made you shiver.

“let’s play a game, ‘kay?” chaewon walked to you, making you walk backwards, trying to get away from her, but soon your body comes in contact with the wall, causing her to grin.

soon her lips are come in contact with yours, cupping your face and hungrily making out with you. you were caught completely off guard, giving her easy access to slip her tongue in your mouth to fully make out with you. it was sudden and she’d never make out with you, what changed now?

she pulled away when she felt herself become breathless, you opened your eyes and caught your breath. desperately trying to catch her breath, “here" she tossed the keys behind her back. "lock the door."

the color was drained from your face when you let those words set in. “hey! w-what—what do you—”

your sentence was cut off when your neck was gripped so tight it left you speechless. your hands instantly went to claw at her hands on your neck, trying to get her to ease up.

she brought her mouth to your ear, “the game is simple. it’s called, ‘how to be a good girl’ it’s only one simple rule, do everything i tell you to do without fighting back and it’ll be easier for you, ‘kay?” she brought her head to its original position, using more force on your neck.

you nodded your head letting out a chocked out, “alright” before she finally let go of your neck. making you gasp out, gasping for air once more.

her friends were highly amused, each of them had a sinister smile on their faces before cracking up in laughs. kazuha even pulled her phone out, which made you look at her, silently pleading for her to put the phone away.

“kazuha—please d-don’t record—” you go to say, tears threatening to fall from your eyes, your reputation was at risk and she knowing her, she didn’t care.

the girl in question, kazuha, scoffed before giggling, “relax ynnie. if you're a good girl and listen to us, i promise i wont post it anywhere.

you could only trust her words, but you already knew they were 9 times out of 10, a bunch of lies, to calm you down.

“now strip, puppy.” chaewon added, lips curling up into a grin, pushing you in the center of the room.

you hesitated, looking at all of their faces that were laced with anticipation to see you strip. what sick perverts.

“tsk—you’re already breaking the one rule, strip.” she repeated herself, sternly looking at you.

you scrambled to unbottom your uniform top, in front of you, meeting chaewon’s eyes which earned a smile from her.

her clique, began to cheer and clap when you unclasped your bra, revealing your plush tits. they’ve never been this invested in you before, their cocks we’re starting to harden under their skirts at the sight. you were vulnerable to her close friends, none of them had never seen your body under your clothes.

you moved down to your skirt, sliding it down your plush thighs, before standing in the the pool of your clothes.

“good girl.” she praised, “now, bend over professor kim’s desk.” she smiled at you.

she was sick for this, but you were terrified so you complied. you shamefully walked over to the desk, walking past kazuha who gave your ass a light slap, making you flinch in shock.

you kept you head down, too embarrassed to look up. you heard the sound of walking, walking closer to you and feeling kazuha’s camera on you.

you saw hands slide a sheet in front of you, it was chaewon’s homework and a pencil right beside it.

you felt a hand carefully caress your ass, flinching slightly from the sudden movement. “complete my homework, and don’t you dare move.” chaewon ordered.

you nodded, picking up the pencil and writing down the answers. it went smoothly for a few minutes, only feeling her presence behind you which made you worry. there was always a catch with her, what was she was going to do to you?

it was like you said it out loud. you soon felt her hands slide your panties down, feeling her breath blow on your cunt, shivering at the sensation.

kazuha immediately brought her camera closer to your face, caring all the expressions and noises you made when chaewon would blow on your cunt. yunjin, immediately brought her camera to get a good side angle of what chaewon was doing under the desk.

chaewon couldn’t resist it anymore, her mouth watering at the sight of your pretty cunt on display for her. “fuck it” she whispered before her tongues jutted out of her mouth, and into your tight hole, gathering your juices on her tongue before drinking it down. you whined at the sensation, squirming under her tight grip on your legs almost giving out on you.

when she started, she really couldn’t stop. she immediately got addicted to your sweet pussy on her tongue, it drove her crazy and craving for more. she began sucking on your clit, letting go with a loud pop which had you covering your mouth, trying to conceal your loud squeals and moans.

“don’t cover your mouth, we wanna hear you, puppy.” sakura moaned, you didn’t even realize she pulled her cock out and started jerking off to the sight right in front of her.

kazuha moved your hand, unmuffling your cute noises. the camera caught the sign on your eyes threatening to roll back, hands shaking, still trying to finish her assignment.

yunjin caught the glimpse of chaewon behind you on her knees, griping on your legs that are threatening to give out while she’s basically making out with your spit covered cunt. yunjin couldn’t believe that her leader was getting pussy drunk but she wasn’t complaining, you were honestly a cute girl with a pretty body. she’ll get a taste of your cunt one day.

you tried your best to not move under her touch like what she ordered you too, but your body was so weak from her mouth on your cunt, you were squirming under her hold.

she pulled away and landed a slap to your puffy cunny that makes you scream and jolt from impact. “hgnnn—chae-chaewon—” you tried turning your head to look at her but kazuha quickly grabs your jaw, and brings it to look at her.

“fuck..don’t look at me like that pretty. focus on the assignment or else she’s stopping again, alright?”kazuha softly speaks to you, earning a whine from you.

chaewon dived back in to your fat cunt, slurping up all that your cunt gave her before tongue fucking your cunt. giving your ass a slap when she feels your body shake under her. she speeds up when she hears your pretty and erotic moans. she’s suddenly pushing your body to the desk, shaking her head in your cunt which had your moans becoming high pitched.

“hey baby, ynnie~ look here—cmon.” kazuha’s camera was shamelessly in front of your face, she makes you look in the camera’s lenses before she’s pushing her fingers in her mouth, which you sucked on almost immediately. you’re brain was scattered that you wouldn’t care less about the camera, eyes rolling back, making kazuha groan.

“does chaewon’s tongue feel good, tell me.” she adds on, pulling her fingers out of your mouth.

“chaewon—chaewonie~ please—please let me cum—i’ll be your good—hngg— i’ll be your good girl!!” her friends are amused by your words and how her tongue had reduced you to a obedient slut.

finally, she had you right where she wanted you. a crying obedient mess, what she wanted everytime you have the nerve to talk back to her.

“please!! m s-sorry for bein a bitch—oh fuck! g-gonna— nghh—cumming—cumming!” you babbled incoherently. she nuzzled her tongue into your sweet hole, bringing her fingers to rub your clit which had you cumming all over her face, body shaking, eyes rolling back, and tongue lolling out for her friends and the camera to see. your legs were like jelly and the only thing keeping you up was her grip on your legs and the desk holding you up.

she cleaned your sweet cum up, drinking up all you gave her before standing up. to unbutton her pants, her boner was bulging out of them, painfully.

her hands groped your ass cheek, giving it a hard spank, ripping a moan out of your chest from the impact.

“stupid slut, you think i’m done? you said you’re gonna be my good girl right? that’s exactly what you’ll do.” she smirked, pulling her boxers down before she’s pushing her cock inside. “fuck! you’re a fucking virgin?” she grunted, watching you struggle to take her thick cock in your cunt.

she didn’t even let you get adjusted, tears falling out your eyes from the feeling of your cunt getting stretched out.

chaewon had you just where she wanted you. bare ass on display and watching it juggle when she pushed herself into your cunt, whining at the feeling of your tight cunt squeezing her cock deliciously good.

she leaved toward, her tits pressing against your bare back, she found a pace that had you moaning uncontrollably, she rested her chin on your shoulder, looking at your fucked out face. her lips tugged into a grin, “ynnie, who’s pussy does this belong to?” she asked, loving the way you’ve been brought to a crying mess by her alone.

“y-yours! only—nghhh— only yours!” you babble out, you’re so fucked out you can’t even comprehend what your saying.

“yea? this sweet lil pussy is all mine? mine to use and play with whenever i want?” she grins, looking at the camera infront of her, speeding her thrusts up, ripping out high pitched squeals and moans.

“as much as i love your pretty little moans, you’re so loud, do you wanna get caught?” she covered your mouth, muffling your moans.

her friends were obsessed with the way you were to whiny, if you were like this all the time…fuck. they would’ve fucked you a long time ago.

“fuck! g-good fucking girl—gonna take my cum right? gonna cum inside this pussy and y-you’re gonna take it!” chaewon moaned, thrust growing sloppy, unclamping her hand that was once on your mouth before loudly moaning, shooting her load inside your cunt.

when you felt her cum shoot inside your cunt, your eyes began to roll once again, back arching into her thrust before your body shakes, your mouth open to let out a silent moan before cumming all over her cock still inside you.

you couldn’t even register when one of her friends pushed her cock in your mouth until your glossy eyes met hers.

sakura, if you were in the right sense of mind you would’ve immediately tried to get her away from you, but you let her use your mouth until she shot her loat in your mouth.

“swallow it, puppy.” she whimpered, petting your messy hair.

she finally pulled out of your mouth, letting you catch your breath from your intense fucking session.

you whined when chaewon finally pulled out of your cum filled cum, leaving your hole agape until she pushes a dildo inside your cunt.

“keep this inside of you and don’t let nothing spill.” she threatens softly, was this the same chaewon you knew? she’s slipping your clothes back on along with hers. maybe under that mean girl facade of hers she was an ok person.

whys she telling yunjin to pick you up and bring her to your car, where was she taking you? you wish you knew but the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion took over your body, putting you in a deep slumber.

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Yandere Superhero X Villain! F! Reader

Wanna buy me a coffee: ☕

TW: Dubcon, spankings, kidnapping, bodily horror

PT.2

Your real name is Y/N L/N, but your villain name is Anima. After your latest failure in trying to find a job, you went into the woods to end it all. Then, by some miracle, an entity older than any Abrahamic religion found your dead body and brought you back to life. Your senses were heightened, and you could hear the animal's chatter and noises as words. With a new feeling of power, you went through society doing whatever you wanted. Even if it meant a few people with broken bones or blood on the floor. That was until a superhero by the name of superhero by the name of Ultimate Man appeared and started defeating you in battle.

He isn't going to be a problem anymore after you take him out with your new suit. Not only does it have the abilities and strengths of every animal alive, but it has the strengths and abilities of the extinct ones. It took kidnapping a paleontologist, but it is so worth it.

"Anima, surrender, and you won't get hurt," Ultimate Man commands, floating a few feet above the ground.

"Sorry, but rent's due," You say, running off with the bags of money from the bank.

As you run, he shoots lasers at you, but you dodge them by zigzagging. Unfortunately, this leads to you not paying attention to where you're going, and you run yourself off a harbor walk. The money sinks into the ocean, and you struggle to swim back up. You switch to the abilities of any marine animal, but it's still not helping you. You see your feet entangled in seaweed and try to break free. Your struggle to free yourself has worn you out, and it seems like this is your last run. Your vision goes black as your instincts tell you to go up to the surface and breathe.

~~~~~~~~~~

When you open your eyes, your jaw and ass feel sore. You try to talk, but there's a gag in your mouth.

"How dare you be such a bad girl and cause so much trouble? Do you have no respect for anyone in this city? Who cares if your rent is due? Get! A! Fucking! Job!" Ultimate Man rants, spanking your ass after every word.

"MM! MH! AWCH!" You scream, your legs kicking as Ultimate Man uses his godly strength to spank you.

The tight latex suit didn't help with the spankings, in fact, the material made sure your body could feel them at their full force.

"Oh, I see the worst girl of the century has awakened. How does it feel knowing you almost got yourself killed trying to steal money?" Ultimate Man asks, taking off your gag.

His blonde hair with light blue highlights, aquamarine eyes, and skin-tight latex white and blue suit is a sight for the eyes. His appearance is ethereal, representing his alien origin from outer space sent to help out Earth on its newest supernatural threat(you.) Who knew having the power of every animal in existence would warrant alien help for the planet Earth?

"I'm sorry, Ultimate Man. I was only trying to pay my rent. Honest," You plead, bracing for another swat to the ass. "I didn't get the raise at my job, even though I deserve it, and I couldn't pay this month's rent."

"I believe you," Ultimate Man says, his hand still rubbing your ass. "But that doesn't mean I forgive you for what you did. I was so worried when you didn't rise from the water. I thought I lost you forever. I need a suitable mate, and you're the only one with abilities almost equal to mine on this planet."

"I'm sorry, WHAT?! I thought you were in a relationship with that news writer, Lora?" You ask, lifting your head.

"Are you kidding me? We're just friends. She couldn't compare to your beauty and strength. Now then, how about we get to know each other."

Ultimate Man peels off your eye mask, then takes out his contacts. There are no pupils in his eyes, just pools of aquamarine. It creeps you out, but at least he's still hot.

"I'm ☍⍀⍜⎍☍⟒⋏ ⏃⏃⍀☍⟒⋔. But you can call me Krouken Aarkem, which is pronounced Cro-oo-can Ar-kem. My human father calls me Ken. Now, what's your name?" Ultimate Man asks, lifting your body with ease.

"It's Marnie," You lie, not wanting to give him your real name.

His fingertips glow blue, and he places them on your head. Pain takes over your head as he searches through the deepest parts of your memory.

"Y/N M/N L/N. What a beautiful name. I'll make sure to bring over your cat so you can have your baby," Krouken says, removing his hands from you.

You slap him and stumble to the other side of the couch.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" You groan, holding your head.

"What did I do wrong? Please don't be mad at me!" Krouken cries, jumping onto your body and hugging you tightly. "I'll never do it again unless you want me to! I promise! Just don't be mad at me!"

"Alright! Alright! I'm not mad at you! Just get off of me!" You yell, pushing him off you after feeling his boner on your leg.

"Yay! Now, we can engage in the Plutonian ritual we call Improving."

Krouken starts taking off his suit, revealing his naked body to you. You back up but bump into the couch, leaving you nowhere to run. He touches your suit, liquifying the material and making it fall off your body like water. Krouken kisses you, his hand tracing every part of your body as if he were memorizing it.

"Your heart is beating fast? Do you want to fight me?" Krouken asks his hand on your chest.

"No. It's just something the human body does when we feel certain emotions," You explain, holding Krouken's hand.

"So you are excited to Improve too? Excellent, I can move forward," Krouken replies, his two dicks merging into one with the width of an adult's fist.

Your eyes widen in fear of the inhuman cock in front of you. There was no way it was going to fit. It was too wide to fit in your human pussy. If it were to go inside you, you'd feel it in your lungs.

"Wait, I think we should-" You plead, only for Krouken to shove his massive cock inside of you.

You can feel it moving inside as if his dick was made from thousands of little suction cups that were kissing your vaginal walls. Krouken's arm holds you in place, and he thrusts.

"Keep going, Krouken!" You moan, lifting your leg and putting it on his shoulder.

Krouken bites and sucks your nipples as he thrusts faster, his dick suction cups losing their grip and becoming more slippery.

"You're never going to be a bad girl ever again. I'm going to fill your stomach up with so many babies that you'll never be able to think of doing stupid shit without having trouble standing up. You're going to birth the next generation of my people. You're mine, all mine. Not those villain's colleague or someone else's enemy, mine," Krouken rambles, thrusting at an inhuman rate, destroying whatever tightness your pussy had.

His eyes become white as he cums, his alien cock suction cups releasing thousands of sperm. Upon his sperm's release, his genital suction cups regained their grip on your walls, and sucking on them, making you go into overdrive. You cum on his dick, and he shudders. Both of you relish in your afterglow, sweat dripping from your body.

"So, what did you think of Improving?" Krouken asks, his head resting on your breasts.

"It was good. By the way, why do your people call it that?" You ask, rubbing Krouken's wet hair.

"Because we improve each other's bodies. Once my seed is in you, it will rework some human DNA so you'll be more like me and vice versa. Your skin is already starting to become shiny and ethereal like my skin," Krouken answers, kissing your neck.

Your body feels extremely hot, like lava is in your veins, and your eyes are burning like no tomorrow. Your spine releases a horrifying crack as your body involuntarily jolts upwards. All you can do is scream as your bones and body transform permanently.

[littlelovelunette]

Vengeance (ft. Ambessa Medarda)

Important note: I don't write for Ambessa Medarda yet, but I WILL open the request slots and start writing fics for her soon.

~ @zthebean27 reblogged my initial post of Vengeance saying they need one like that with Ambessa, and reblogs help writers. Since you helped me, I'll help you <3

The air was thick with the scent of iron.

Your blood soaked into the silk sheets, a deep crimson stain spreading across the once-pristine fabric.

Your breaths were shallow, each one dragging fire through your lungs. You had managed to kill the assassin—his body lay crumpled on the floor, neck twisted at an unnatural angle. But not before his blade had found you.

Pain throbbed in your side, sharp and relentless, the warmth of your own life pooling beneath you.

The world swayed, the edges of your vision blurring, dark spots creeping in like shadows waiting to claim you.

The heavy stomp of boots echoed down the marble hall. Controlled. Powerful. Unhurried.

You knew that sound. "Ambessa..." You whispered the name, but your voice died before it could issue from your lips.

The doors to the private quarters were flung open with a force that made the walls tremble.

Ambessa Medarda stood in the doorway, framed by the flickering torchlight, her golden eyes burning with something dangerous. She took in the scene—the ruined bed, the dead assassin, the blood. Your blood.

Ambessa's blood ran cold.

For the first time, you saw something flicker across her face. It was gone in an instant, buried beneath years of discipline and war-forged control, but you had seen it. A crack in the unshakable foundation.

She crossed the room in three strides. The scent of steel and spice clung to her, familiar and grounding.

A gloved hand seized your chin, tilting your face up. Her thumb brushed over your cheek—soft, just for a second—before she dropped to her knees beside the bed.

"Who?" Her voice was low, dangerous.

You forced a smirk, though it felt weak. "Didn't stop to ask." You managed to gesture at the tangles of what you left of the assassin.

She huffed a breath through her nose, unimpressed. But there was something in the way her fingers flexed against your skin, like she was restraining herself from gripping too hard.

Her gaze dropped to the wound in your side. Without a word, she tore off her gloves, hands moving with practiced efficiency as she pressed down on the injury.

White-hot agony lanced through you, and you gasped, fingers curling into the sheets.

"Stay awake." A command. No room for argument.

Her grip was firm, steady, keeping pressure on the wound as she reached for the dagger at her belt.

With a swift motion, she sliced a strip of cloth from your ruined nightwear, winding it tightly around your waist. It was rough, brutal, but effective.

"Get me more later." You whispered with a small breathy giggle. "It was my favourite set." You pouted a little despite the searing pain.

"You should have been more careful."

A reprimand, but there was an edge to it—one that wasn’t entirely anger.

Your lips curled into a faint, pained smirk. "You almost sound worried."

Her jaw clenched. "You're my wife." The words were clipped, precise. Like stating an undeniable fact. "No one touches what is mine."

Ambessa lifted you effortlessly into her arms, holding you against her broad chest as if you were something fragile—something worth protecting.

Her heart beat steady beneath your ear, strong and unwavering. And for the first time since the attack, you felt safe.

Ambessa carried you like you weighed nothing, her grip unyielding but careful, as if the very idea of dropping you was inconceivable.

Her body radiated warmth, a grounding presence amid the pain and blood loss clouding your mind. You could hear the sharp commands she barked to the guards as she strode through the Medarda estate.

“Lock down the premises. Find any other threats. If they breathe wrong, kill them.”

Her voice was steel, but the way she clutched you was something else entirely.

By the time she reached the estate’s private medical wing, exhaustion threatened to pull you under. The moment she laid you down, her big hands hesitated—just for a fraction of a second—before pulling away. The loss of her warmth sent a shiver through you.

The medics swarmed in, but Ambessa didn’t leave your side.

She hovered, arms crossed, jaw tight, watching every movement with the lethal focus of a warrior on the battlefield.

When the lead doctor hesitated, she snapped, "If you let her die, I will personally ensure you regret it."

The pressure of bandages, the sharp sting of antiseptic—it all blurred together. But through it all, Ambessa was there, her presence an unshakable force.

By the time the medics finished, the pain had dulled into a bearable throb. The room had emptied, leaving only you and her.

You forced your eyes open, searching for her in the dim light. She was sitting at your bedside, elbows resting on her knees, her head bowed slightly.

The usual ironclad mask she wore had cracked, just enough for you to see what lay beneath.

Concern.

Relief.

Love.

When she realized you were watching her, she exhaled slowly and leaned forward, her fingers brushing against your cheek.

It was the softest touch you had ever felt from her—warm, steady, reverent.

"You scared me," she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.

You blinked, caught off guard. Ambessa Medarda didn’t admit weakness.

Your lips twitched into a weak grin. "You? Scared? The great warlord of Noxus?"

Her hand shifted, trailing down to cup the side of your neck, thumb brushing gently over your pulse. "I would burn the world to the ground for you."

The weight of those words settled between you, heavier than any blade, sharper than any wound.

"You’re not losing me that easily," you murmured, tilting your head into her touch.

She huffed, something like amusement flickering in her golden eyes.

"Good. Because if you had died, I would’ve had to drag you back just to scold you for being reckless."

You chuckled, wincing slightly, and she immediately pressed a kiss to your forehead—a rare, intimate gesture that sent warmth spreading through your chest.

"Rest, love" she murmured, fingers threading through your hair.

"I’ll be here when you wake."

[fancyfeathers]

Always Prey But Never A Bird

Based on the Yandere Batfam w/ Wife/Mother!Darling & Daughter/Sister!Darling series

Previous Chapter <- Chapter Eight -> Next Chapter

Taglist: @jsprien213 @toast-on-dandelioms @plsfckmedxddy @lilyalone @sydneyyyya @yandere-wishes @cxcilla @nemesis-writer

“Miss Wayne, any comments about your disappearance?”

“Miss Wayne, where have you been for the last four years?”

“Miss Wayne, does your father, Bruce Wayne, approve of your engagement to Gabriel Christel?”

“Who will you be wearing at your wedding?”

“Miss Wayne, will you family be invited to your wedding?”

“Miss Wayne…”

“Miss Wayne…”

“Miss Wayne!”

A sudden flash of a camera made you flinch and stumble backwards, an environment you had once lived in and you were now being thrown back into.

You had returned to the penthouse after you woke up at Selina Kyle’s apartment, arriving just in time for breakfast with Gabriel, his parents, and a new hired wedding planner, but they did not last long because their idea of some high class celebrity wedding that felt tacky and just for show, all about guest lists and who is going to be wearing what. They tried to push back on your wants, you two were very high profile people and your wedding should match, but even that was breaking point for Gabriel, he snapped at the wedding planner, telling them to leave, or rather yelling at them to leave.

So now you had just been dropped off at Gabriel's mother's boutique for some sort of surprise after you and Gabriel did some of your own wedding planning after breakfast. You just did not expect the swarm of gossip column reporters and paparazzi, even if you grew up with it you were no longer used to it, you felt like an absolute deer in the headlights.

“Excuse me, but Miss Wayne is taking no questions at this time.” Like she was your hero, the doors to the famous fashion’s designer boutique opened up and a hand came to rest upon your shoulder, like your guardian angel Mrs. Christel came to your rescue, pulling you away from the press and back towards her fashion house. “Please save all questions for a later date when Miss Wayne is ready for a proper interview.”

You heard their shouts of protest as you were tugged back into her building, leaving the press stuck outside, still shouting their questions. You breathed a sigh of relief as you watched the doors close behind you as you walked deeper into the designer’s gallery, your future mother in law interlocking your arm with hers.

“Reporters and paparazzi, they are like rats or cockroaches.” She sighed. Her hand squeezes around your arm. “Even when you think you have stomped them out and think they are dead, they always come back, desperate for another taste.”

“I… I don’t know about all of that.” You muttered, feeling yourself shrink into yourself. “A-anyway, what is the surprise?”

“It is not my surprise, I just helped plan, closing the doors of my humble boutique to the public for a few hours.” Humble was not the exact words you were looking for, this was a high end fashion boutique, the most esteemed in the city, perhaps practically in all of the East Coast, the place had marble flooring and crystal chandeliers. She led you into one of the departments of the boutique, the wedding dress department which was only open to appointments and there you saw two very familiar ladies.

“M-mom! Selina!” You yelled out, running over to the woman sitting on one of the white velvet sofas along with Selina, glasses of champagne in both of their hands, though your mother passed hers over to Selina as you came running into her arms, nearly knocking her over and off the couch she sat on and the sound of hers and your laughter filled the empty designer boutique.

“Miss Kyle contacted me earlier this morning before breakfast and asked if I could set this up.” Your future mother in law smiled, walking back to the dress racks, seemingly where she had already picked a few dresses out, along with your mother and Selina no doubt before you got here. “But you Mrs. Wayne, I have not seen you in ages, truly a sight for sore eyes, but how ever did Miss Kyle get you out of that manor your husband owns?”

“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” Your mother replied as you scooted over to sit next to her on the sofa she sat on. You certainly knew what that meant when she said that, Selina snuck her out, probably when everyone in the manor was still asleep. “Let’s just say my husband will not be happy when he realizes I am gone.”

You definitely knew now that Selina snuck her out.

“Well it is a shame your husband and other children do not approve of the union of our daughter and son, it would be nice to have Bruce Wayne’s blessing, then perhaps we could finally get along.” Your fiancé’s mother sighed, taking back the dresses that were already picked out and hanging them up in the dressing room which was connected to this little lounge you all found yourself in. “Oh I remember that time where your little Damian got all up in knots over your daughter kissing my son, that was sure to be an interesting meeting with the principal.”

“Ah yes… my apologies, that was an unfortunate chain of events, my stepson has always been protective over my little girl, she is his little sister and his blood sister no less.” Your mother’s hand trailed down to your own, giving it a soft squeeze. “Besides Damian has always had his anger issues and over protective tendencies, the ladder is something he very much inherited from his father I believe.”

“That reminds me, who is Damian’s mother? You are his stepmother so it is not you and he is not adopted like the rest.” Your future mother in law leaned against the door of the dressing room, a smirk playing at the corners of her lips. “Don’t tell me the Brucie Wayne had an affair with another woman while he was with you during your original engagement to him.”

“No… Damian was something… actually you really do not want to know that one.”

______________________

“Hmm, I don’t know, I quite liked the lace one.”

“Yes, but that one is a very select taste, maybe we stick with the silk.”

“I think the plunging neckline looked quite pretty on you, that way you can wear a statement necklace.”

You have lost count of all the dresses you have tried on for the three older women, they were probably having more fun out of this than you were at this point, having you dress up like a doll.

“I need a break.” You sighed dramatically as you leaned yourself up against the open dressing room door, glancing back at the older women in the room. “How many more dresses are there?”

“Well I have about a dozen dresses a designer friend of mine sent me from their boutique in Barcelona.” Your future mother in law commented which made you groan loudly and Gabriel’s mother glanced at your mother and she smiled, reaching for a white paper bag that is reminiscent of the ones you would get with a purchase from a designer store. “But I suppose there is just one more for today.”

“What is it?”

“This was my mother’s wedding dress and her mother’s wedding dress. I am the one who didn’t wear it because it is so important to our family and I didn’t feel like I deserved to wear it on my wedding day, but maybe you would like to wear it.” She walked towards you, handing you the bag with the dress inside.

“Thank you, mom.” You smiled at her, swallowing down any crying so as to not make a scene and ruin the happy moment you all were having. You let her push you back into the dressing room and close the door once you were inside.

You set the bag down on the small bench in the dressing room and you pulled out the dress from the bag and for how old it is the dress was in perfect condition. It was an older style, the top was covered in lace that created a transparent turtleneck with long sleeves and the underdress made up charmeuse with a sweetheart neckline and tulle puffing out the skirt a little bit, sort of a toned down version of a Victorian style wedding dress. You had seen photos of your grandmother and your great grandmother wearing this dress before, but your mother never wanted to, her marriage did not deserve such a privilege in her own eyes.

You slipped on your mother’s family’s heirloom dress pull the sleeves over your arms and the lace was soft, not itchy like you imagined, but when you tried to reach to the back and button it up since it had no zipper you could not quite reach them or see them. You sighed and opened the dressing room door, peaking your head to look at your mom. “Hey mom, could you help me button up the back? I can’t quite reach the buttons on it.”

“Yes, of course, my sweetness.” She replied to your request, standing up from where she sat next to Selina and your future mother in all, walking into the dressing room with you and closing the door behind her. She pulled your hair over your shoulder before her hands began to make quick work of buttoning up the back of your dress, her nimble and quick fingers doing her best to get a hold of the small fabric buttons. “You look so beautiful, I am so happy for you my darling little girl… I just wish I could be there, but you know…”

“I understand mama, life… life has been rough on us, especially you.” You sigh, slightly flinching as you feel her icy cold, freezing hand brush up against your bare skin over your spine. “But at least we have this, right?”

“…right.” She sighed, her face turning sorrowful before you watched her form a bittersweet smile across her lips. “You are going to make the most beautiful bride, I just know it, and I see it as well in this moment now.”

“I love you mom.”

“I love you more, my little bug.”

Eventually your mother finished and opened the dressing room door and you were entirely prepared for the doting comments from Selina and your future mother in law but instead you got assaulted with a mesh of black fabric being thrown right at your face. You caught the dress, a black wedding dress for those who were more their style.

“Wear that one, it fits.” Your body tensed up as you heard an all too familiar voice, Damian. Your eyes shot up to look at your older brother across the room and walking towards you and his current state of anger was clear. Selina was just sitting there on the velvet sofa, sighing and shaking her head in clear disappointment, meanwhile your future mother in law was busy taking out her phone and calling up her security, all while wondering how he even got past them and into her boutique.

“It’s my wedding, not my funeral, Damian.” You snap back at him, settting the black wedding dress down on the white velvet sofa next to Selina as Damian grabbed your mother by her wrist and began dragging her out of the room, but not before he looked back at you, a glare like daggers in his eyes.

“It might as well be.”

There was a silent gasp that escaped your lips as he spoke those words, your lips agape in shock at his hurtful words and your brow furrowed as he turned away from you, pulling your mother out, you can only imagine the scolding she is going to get on the ride back to the manor and the scolding she will get back at the manor as well.

You broke…

You fell to your knees crying…

Your heart broke, being hurt by a person you always told yourself you hated.

______________________

You left the boutique shortly after your mother was taking away by Damian, Selina left with you but you decided to tell her that you were walking home, well the penthouse, since the paparazzi was long gone by now. In actuality you were not going back to the manor, you lied to Selina.

You stepped into a back alley, it was about a block away from the boutique and three blocks away from the building the penthouse was in on the top floor. Your heart pounded in your chest as you unzipped your white Italian leather purse, a designer brand which was a gift from your future father in law, and you pulled out that beautiful silk scarf you had been gifted by Talia Al Ghul. Your hands were shaking as you wrapped it around your neck, your breathing growing unsteady.

You closed your eyes as if by clockwork you felt two other presences in the ally way, barely hearing the footsteps of the two members of the League of Assassins, looks like they have been following you.

“Just… don’t leave any visible bruises please, I can’t explain them to my in-laws.”

“My lady, if we did that we would be a good as dead.”

That was the last thing you heard before you felt a swift finger press against a pressure point on your neck and your body grew rigid, numb. You could of sworn you felt something being pressed against your lips and nose but you could not quite process that or anything, everything just felt numb…

Being kidnapped was just like falling asleep.

______________________

Your body felt as if it was as heavy as metal as you woke up from your drug induced sleep, you opened your eyes but everything was blurry, you still could not feel anything in your body, you could barely hear anything either, it was as if your ears were stuffed with cotton.

Your fingers felt ice cold, it was like they had been soaking in ice water from the Arctic Ocean. The feeling of a freezing cold like numbness made you panic for a moment, almost thinking your fingers would fall off or maybe your entire hands would.

Your head had a roaring headache, the type you could get after falling from a building and getting a severe concussion, but that was quickly fading away as you felt hands push you to sit up, hands maneuvering you as if you were a porcelain doll or a puppet or marionette.

Being moved around made you painfully aware of the stiffness in your spine, as if a metal rod ran through it, unable to move it probably.

You heard voices, but they were muffled and you could not quite hear what they were saying nor process their moving figures, just blurs. There was someone sitting in front of you, someone you could think was man by the outline of his build. The other was a woman sitting next to you, the one making you sit up, she was saying something to you, something you could not quite process and you felt her warm hand on your cheek, her thumb running circles on your cheek, it was something soothing from what you could process. You felt the woman’s free hand reach for something on a table, a cup, it was warm, if you were less lucid you may have mistaken it for tea, but you could smell it, it was sharp and pungent, the very scent of the hot liquid snapping your senses back into place, your control over taste, touch, sight, hearing, all flooding back to you thanks to your sense of smell.

You found yourself coughing, choking on your saliva due to the sudden shock, and you felt the woman’s hand on your back running soothing circles as her other had stroked your cheek. You could barley hear your own heartbeat, you could hear your own heavy breathing an comments, the sudden sensory overload making your body want to vomit but your stomach was already empty at the moment.

“Shh… just breathe, my dearest.” Your eyes snapped open wide at the sound of a familiar and feminine voice, your head turned to the side as your body was still hunched over from your coughing, and you looked up to see a familiar woman, albeit dressed far more comfortably than the sort of thing she wore during the times you encountered her in the nights of Gotham. You felt her hand on your cheek pinch slightly, it was affection you think, as she smiled down at you. “How are you feeling, dearest?”

“F-fine…” You cleared your throat as you forced yourself to sit up straight again. Your body felt tense as you felt another set of eyes upon you from across where you and Talia sat next to each other.

“That is good, after all it has been far too long.” You felt fear itself course through your very veins as you heard the man’s voice who sat across from you and his own daughter. You kept yourself from shaking as you turned your head to look him in the eyes, his bright green eyes sending intense shivers down your spine. You had only met him once or twice before, and neither time could be described as exactly peaceful, both were times you were dragged along by Damian after you were caught after you snuck out of the manor to go to parties or your friend’s houses in high school and you had gotten caught up in his family drama on your way home all while trying to get away from your own.

The far older man smiled at you, a smile you would have placed as a kid or affectionate if you did not know who this was, and knowing who this man was just made you want to shrink into yourself and pretend this was not happening.

“We have much to discuss, my dear.”

You sat across, trapped in a room with Ra’s Al Ghul.

[escapingrealtiylovinginsanity]

Jay Halstead: Bulletproof 2 

If this seems a little off it was because I was pushing through some serious writer's block. Enjoy  

You feel a pulsing throughout your entire body. Steady in rhythm but jarring you from the inside out. Your vision blurred, going between fuzzy and complete static. Your ears were ringing and your mind had gone completely blank. You just knew that you had to hold on. Hold on tightly and don’t let go or something bad will happen. Your fingers clench tighter. 

You hear a voice but it is lost in the whirling of your brain. You feel a hesitant grip on your forearm. Your vision turns white before coming back in slices. You see Jay’s face flash in front of you. There is fear on his face. His eyebrows furrowed with concern. You blink trying to force yourself to focus on him. His mouth is moving but you can’t hear what he is saying. You shake your head blinking. The roaring of blood through your ears subsides and you hear his soothing tone.  

“-To me. That’s it, baby, just give it here.” Rough calloused fingers cup your hand as you try to make sense of his words. Your hands are throbbing underneath his. “It’s okay, you're safe now. Just give me the gun.”  

Gun? What gun? You did have one- even if you did, you barely knew how to shoot. You were discombobulated trying to get a grip on what was going on. You feel Jay’s hands trying to loosen your fingers. Your grip automatically tightens. You have to- you know it’s important. “It’s okay sweetheart it's over.” He glances down and your eyes follow his. The sleek black metal of a gun. You feel bile coming back up your throat as memories flash through your brain.  

Two men breaking in. Kim shooting one, his gun sliding across the floor. The loud crack of a gun firing again. This time hitting Kim. Blood going everywhere. You scrambling for the man who's been shot's gun. Pointing and firing sloppily at the man before he could shoot her again. The first two shots just grazing him. Firing at him until the gun clicked, the clip empty and the man stopped moving.  

“You can let go.” Jay gently squeezes your hands, seeing you come back to reality a bit. You purposefully loosen your grip, practically peeling your fingers away with how tightly you had been holding on. When the gun is finally out of your hands, he transfers it holding it out behind him and you watch as Kevin takes it from him. You glance around and notice that there are a lot of other cops around, most you didn’t know. They all look nervous and a lot of them are holding their own firearms. It would take you months to realize that you had been in danger at that moment from the people sworn to protect you. That if Jay hadn’t blocked their line of fire, they could very well have shot you for not complying when they told you to drop the weapon. 

Whether you had registered they had said or not. 

Jay pulled you into a tight hug, his fingers curling in your hair rocking you gently back and forth. “Is Kim okay?” You breathe into his chest. You can feel the roughness of his bulletproof vest, some of your hair pulling, the tresses stuck in the Velcro. 

“They are taking her to Med. It didn’t look too bad. She should be fine.” You can feel yourself trembling in his arms, the hairs on your arms standing straight up as ice washes through your body. You push deeper into his embrace searching for comfort and warmth.  

“Good, that’s good.” His hand rubs your back, pressing a kiss to your temple. “That guy-the one- the one I shot...Is he- is he dead?” You don’t get an answer. Cops are leaving and being replaced by CSU. How long have you been sitting on the floor? Your whole body felt numb.  

Jay starts to pull away and you panic, but he only takes his jacket off and wraps you in it. You can smell his detergent mixed with his cologne. It is comforting and you don’t notice that he has pulled you to your feet and led you outside until you are sitting on the back of an ambulance. The blonde paramedic is staring at you and appears to be waiting for something but the buzzing in your ears has returned and your brain can’t focus on anything.  

“We need consent to take her to the hospital.” 

“I’m her emergency contact. I give consent.” They start loading you up and you only start to push them off when they urge you on the gurney. Jay soothes you and you cling to his arm as he urges you to lay back. You comply, grip tight on his arm forcing him to sit on the edge. He brushes your hair out of your face as the ambulance doors slam shut and start to move.    

[goldenlikedayl1ght]

the albatross - m. murdock

a/n: hi everyone! so this is that weird and off putting reader i was mentioning earlier! she's not that weird but she's sort of odd so yeah. also i know bucky is the winter soldier but idk how else to tag this so oh well! i do have lore and stuff for readers time as a soldier so i'll include that in later installments! i was kind of in a writers block and this pushed me out of that. so enjoy! please please tell me what you thought and if you want more! warnings: cursing, mentions of death, war, torture, pain, people being dead, reader having horrible people skills and ptsd, mentions of sex maybe? uhmmm in general reader is just sort of strange and this is her and matt's early relationship, so sorry if i missed anything ! word count: 3.6k summary: you have spent the past ninety (give or take) years tortured and in pain. then, a handsome stranger comes into your life and changes everything. pairing: matt murdock x winter soldier!fem!reader now playing: the albatross - taylor swift "i'm the albatross/i swept in at the rescue/the devil that you know/looks now more like an angel/i'm the life you chose/and all this terrible danger"

You’re working a morning shift at the bakery when he comes in. The pastries in the case are laid out just so, and you have been meticulously working on this sign for your fall specials. You are determined to focus on something that is not how poorly you slept, your hair tied up in a braid behind you as you work.

You’re determined to get these pumpkin stems drawn correctly; a green marker clenched in your hand. Your knuckles are white with the tension you are holding in your fingers. It’s around eight in the god damn morning, and you have been awake since around three a.m.

You don’t even hear the bell ring, nor do you hear the click-clacking of a cane on the tiled floors, you only hear an awkward clearing of the throat, to which you spin around, about to throw the marker at the customer, but stopping when you realize what you’re doing.

The customer smiles awkwardly at you, and you recognize instantly that between his glasses and cane, he is most definitely blind. You almost feel silly, until you remember everything, and you wish that there was more moments where you think you’re silly for being paranoid.

And there’s something else, too. You look at this man for a few moments, before realizing that he is so god damn hot. Which, is weird, because you have not felt anything for any man or woman in years, too busy focusing on other things, too busy thinking about everything that’s happened. But god, the stubble tracing his face, the way his dark hair falls, and the way his hand wraps around his cane..

But what gets you really is his lips. Maybe you’re staring, maybe you don’t care. But his lips are this pretty pink, and you find yourself getting lost in the nicest daydream you’ve had in a very long time..

And then, you snap out of that fantasy to remind yourself that you are working and don’t even know his name.

“Hi, sorry,” You cough awkwardly, “Was just focused,” You tell him, approaching the counter. You wipe your sweaty hands on your apron, before putting on your best ‘I’m a friendly bakery worker who just wants to sell you pastries, also tip me please!’ smile on. “What can I get you?” You ask.

“Do you guys have apple turnovers?” It is the first time this fall that is under 65 degrees, so you understand that there is some cravings for autumn snacks.

“Yeah, yeah,” You move towards the case to get some, “Just the one?”

“Three, actually. For the office.” He hums.

“Some big office,” Your voice is a sarcastic mumble, not really for the an to hear but he chuckles at it, and you almost think it’s weird that he an hear you but your brain tells you not to judge, since there is a whole lot the handsome stranger could judge you for.

“We’re a small business. Very friendly, very personable.”

You cannot help yourself, and you find yourself asking, “What sort of business are you in?” What the handsome stranger does not know is that you are insatiably angry at yourself for asking that because you had pretty much promised yourself that you were never going to have any sort of relationship—it wouldn’t be fair to them, it wouldn’t be fair to you. And as previously established, that wasn’t a problem, because you weren’t really attracted to anyone before this handsome stranger waltzed on into the bakery.

“I’m a lawyer.” He smiles. A lawyer.

“Well, Mr. Lawyer, your total is 10.75.” He pulls out a twenty and when you hand him change, he asks, “Which one is the five?” and you wordlessly pull out the five from the stack you handed him, before he puts the rest of the change in his wallet, dropping a five and a small card into your tip jar. “You have a good day now.” He hums, before making his way out of the bakery.

You watch intently, maybe a little too intently, and you hear the voice of your best friend from your teenage years in your head saying, ‘You hate to see him go, but you love to watch him leave.’ And a small smile finds its way to your face.

Then, you notice the card he dropped in the jar before fishing it out. On the front, it reads,

‘Matthew M. Murdock, Attorney at Law.’ On the back, you read,

‘Nelson, Murdock & Page, Attorneys at Law,

Hell’s Kitchen’

Accompanied by this is a phone number and an address.

You pocket the card, and before you know it, costumers are flooding in, and you ease into the day, forgetting about the handsome stranger until you leave the bakery at around six o’clock that night. You finish cleaning up from the day before letting the woman who works to prep for the next day. Then you leave, heading home to the too quiet, too small apartment.

You don’t have much in your apartment. You sleep with a gun under your pillow and you have a cheap TV on your dresser. You spend most of your time catching up on books or movies. You make yourself box mac and cheese before eating it right out of the pot, sitting on your kitchen floor.

As you cook the mac and cheese, you say his name over and over again, letting it sit on your tongue and escape your lips, thinking about him intently. You glance at your watch and decide that maybe it’s early enough that he might still be at his office.

You fish your tiny flip phone out of your pocket, dialing the number on the card and waiting. You’re holding your breath as the phone rings. A thought runs through your brain that maybe he gave you a wrong number and then your brain immediately reminds you that no man is ever going to give you his card, printed out, just to fuck with you.

“Nelson, Murdock & Page, how can I help you?” A voice asks, and you blink, hesitating for a minute.

“Uh, I’m looking for Matthew.” You say, and there’s some light shuffling, and again, this regret shoots over you until you hear a very smooth, very familiar voice,

“Hey,” His voice is like honey and you long to hear it clearer—The first time you’ve desired a better phone. “I was hoping you’d call.”

“Yeah, well, Maybe I just like the sound of your voice.”

“You know usually, that’s my line.”

“Wait, that works on people?” You hear his laugh on the other side of the phone and a shiver runs down your spine as you itch to make him laugh more.

“Telling people they’re beautiful doesn’t hit the same when you’re blind.”

“I guess not..” There’s a silence on his end of the phone, before he says,

“I never got your name.” For a moment, you consider giving him a fake name, but you find yourself giving him your name, the one that your parents gave you all those years ago. It’s foreign on your lips, a rare gem that you do not often give out. He repeats it and you swear you could almost die right then and there. “What are you doing tonight?” 

You’re taken back by his forwardness, not anticipating that maybe this handsome stranger, Matthew, wants to be around you just as bad as you want to be around him. And then you look around at your dingy apartment, with your boxy TV, the gun under your pillow, and you, sitting on the floor of your kitchen, having just finished eating box mac and cheese with a wooden spoon that just for a second tastes like the one your mother used to cook with, the one you’d get tastes of sauces, soups, anything you could get your hands on.

And then you remember everything that happened after those days sneaking tastes of your mom’s cooking and you feel guilty for pursuing handsome Matthew, because he has no idea what he is getting into.

“Just finished dinner. Was planning on just relaxing.” Reading until around midnight and then getting an hour or two of sleep.

“Well, how about we go do something?” You detect a bit of hopefulness in his voice. You find yourself asking before you can stop yourself,

“Like, like a date?” And he laughs again.

“Yes, like a date.”

“I don’t know,” You start, “Usually I have to ask my father’s permission before I go out on the town with a boy.” You want to slap your hand over your mouth because you sound your age. Oh god.

“Really?”

“..No.” You hope he finds your weird, totally not a cover up, joke funny. And he laughs again, telling you,

“You’re funny.”

Yeah, really fucking hilarious.

“So, a date?”

“A date.” You consider this for a moment. A date might lead somewhere real. Somewhere dangerous. Somewhere you haven’t been in.. years. Years might be an understatement. Your heart thuds against your chest, and you find yourself full of that nostalgic thing you call desire.

“What would we do?”

“Anything you want.” He tells you.

“Anything? That’s dangerous.” Because this whole thing is dangerous, you want to tell him, maybe you should mention the whole age thing, the whole assassin thing, the whole brainwashing thing, the whole thing.

“Yeah? What dangerous things do you have in mind, doll?” You have to hold the phone away from your ear to breathe, because it feels like someone just took the winds out of your sails. Suddenly it is 1940 something and a boy is flirting with you, and you have to act like a lady in hopes that he will treat you right.

Odd thing to think about today, but you’re an odd person.

“What about ice cream and a bookstore?” You ask, and for a moment you want to hit yourself for not suggesting something cool like a club or something and then you realize that you have no idea what counts as a cool date in this day and age.

Did you know when you were a teenager and had the world at your fingertips, eighty (give or take) years ago?

But to your surprise, handsome Matthew just responds,

“That sounds nice. Do you want me to pick you up at your apartment?”

The idea of handsome Matthew being at your tiny apartment that is not suitable for a date makes your heart race.

“I’ll meet you at the ice cream place in an hour. You know the one near the bakery?”

“Yeah. See you then.”

“Yeah. See you.” And when you hang up, you realize just what has happened. For the first time since 1944, You have landed yourself a date with a handsome man that is genuinely interested in you and in your infinite wisdom decided that ice cream and books were the best way to impress him.. Books.. Blind man.

You lightly bang your head against the counter behind you, muttering to yourself how stupid that was. But you an only dwell on it for a moment before you are standing up and making your way over to your room to get ready.

You’re still in your work uniform. And you look like an idiot. So, you clean yourself up and pull on something presentable, something comfortable. There is no confusion as to the nature of this meet up, you two are going on a date and you asked a blind man to go to a bookstore. You feel like an asshole. And you’re aware that you’re putting emphasis on that, but still!

You go through outfits and outfits, trying to figure out what an appropriate outfit is for this first date. You end up in something casual, and you hope you’re not underdressed. Honestly, you know you’re making a fuss over something as standard as a date, but you are genuinely desperate to have this go well.

You finally decide on an outfit and make your way out the door, grabbing your jacket and stepping out of the apartment. You stop outside of your door before turning around and going back into your room to change your top.

But eventually, you do get to the ice cream place Matt and you had discussed on the phone. And there he is, in all his glory, wearing the same outfit he wore when you saw him in the bakery that morning, only, without his tie, and he looks more disheveled. Somehow it’s more charming to see him like this, more exhilarating to imagine a life with such a low stakes man (You’ll look back on this thought later and laugh)

“Hi,” You greet, and Matt smiles in your direction.

“Hi.” He hums, and again, you feel nervous! So, before he can say much else, you blurt out,

“So, This is my first date in a while.. So. Sorry about that.” You say awkwardly.

“A while?” He asks, tilting his head like a curious dog. You’re struck by the fact that he is around 70 years younger than you. “Like, a few months?”

A beat.

Handsome Matthew is much busier than you are, it seems.

“More like a couple of years.” And by ‘a couple’ you mean eighty some odd years, but Matt doesn’t need to know all of that right now. But he just hums and nods, before answering,

“That’s alright, I’ll be gentle.” Your face flushes, and with a nervous laugh, you ask,

“You mean we’ll take it slow?”

“Sure. Whatever. We’ll figure out the details of it all later.” His hand finds yours, and before you can protest he pulls you into the ice cream shop. Handsome Matthew orders chocolate chip cookie dough because he is perfect in every way, and you order..

“Butter pecan, please.” You get odd glances from Matthew and the seventeen year old minimum wage worker behind the counter, but neither of them say anything. You manage to beat Matthew to paying for the ice cream, and as you walk, he asks,

“Butter pecan? Really?” And you roll your eyes. Young people today, always judging.

“You’re lucky they didn’t have butterscotch, that’s my real favorite.” You respond, before taking a lick of the ice cream. Your handsome date, gives you another bizarre look.

“Okay, what’s your third favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Mm..” You take a few minutes to think about it, before deciding on your answer. “A tie between pistachio and coffee.” And at your answer, Matt laughs at you. You let out an offended gasp, although you’re not being serious, before asking, “what’s so horrible about that?”

“You have the ice cream preferences of an eighty year old,” He laughs and you laugh too, because oh, if only he knew.

“Sorry, my pallet is straight from the 40’s.” It’s a joke. That’s a joke. Not at all based in facts or actuality. You continue working through eating your ice cream and talking to your handsome date. “So, does the handsome lawyer have any family I should know about?”

“You think I’m handsome?” He grins, and your face flushes.

“Answer the question.”

“No siblings. My dad died when I was young and It’s only recently that I’ve been talking to my mother.” Interesting, you think, and then this dawning realization happens where you realize that the next thing out of his mouth will be the inevitable question, “How about your family?”

You consider lying but you decide against it. If this is going to lead anywhere good, you don’t want to base it off lies.

“Not much to say. I’m the sole survivor.” You shrug, keeping it vague. He frowns a bit before squeezing your hand.

“A couple of orphans, huh?”

You squeeze his back.

“Seems like it.”

You kind of aren’t over the death of your parents and your siblings and quite literally everyone you knew as a teenager and young adult—You’re not over so many fucking things that if you went through it all, you’d probably keep poor Handsome Matthew up all night.

But instead of talking about that, Matt finds himself walking with you to the bookstore. You hold the door open for him and begin to wander. You quickly move past the books on World War II, as if faced with an ex you want nothing to do with them.

You begin to look at the romance books, scrunching your nose at how cheesy and surface level so many of these young adult novels are. But then you remind yourself that you are a hundred years old. But you look like you’re in your late twenties, early thirties. As you’re looking at the books, Matthew makes his way to the aisle next to yours, and talks to you through the stacks.

“So, what’s your favorite book?”

“That’s like asking a mother her favorite child.” You answer quickly, and you hear him laugh. Your face flushes.

“Try for me.”

“Uh, I really love Great Gatsby. I’m kind of fascinated with the zombie genre, too, it’s sort of new and interesting, and uh, oh, I read this Neil Gaiman novel, uh, Stardust? I really liked that.” You confess. Matt listens as you fumble through novels, both of you making your way towards the end of the aisle.

“And movies?”

“Why is everything about me? I didn’t hear your favorite novel.”

“The Outsiders.” He responds, and you make a mental note to try and find it in the bookstore. “So, movies?”

You’ve had autonomy for around three years now, so.. Your movie knowledge has been kind of stunted, so you wrack your brain to try and come up with something impressive.

“I really like the Indiana Jones series, uh, oh, The Matrix, and..” You ponder your brain. “Oh! And King Kong!” You saw that one in the theatres for your thirteenth birthday.

“Like, the one that came out in 2017?” He asks, and again, you consider lying, because you actually have seen that one because when you looked up ‘King Kong’ it came out, and it really blew your mind how far CGI had come.

“No, the one that came out in ’33.” As if it is the most normal thing in the entire world.

“One of your favorite movies is one from 1933?” And the old woman in you wants to insist that you loved the decades you grew up in, and that seeing King Kong in the theatres was a marvelous thing because you could barely afford rent. And then you remember you shouldn’t reveal your history with the Great Depression to a man you’re on your first date with.

“Yup.” You assert, and ask, “You?”

“Star Wars, any of them, and the Princess Bride.” Again, you make a note to add it to your list.

“Interesting.” You hum, and you find The Outsiders, wanting to read it, to consume it, to consume him, and every thought he has. The two of you meet at the end of the aisle, too close to be platonic as his hands come to find your arms, and you shudder at the affection.

“Touch starved, huh?” He grins. You flush and roll your eyes.

“You’re so mean.” You huff, and he laughs. His hand moves up your arms and cups your jaw, enjoying the feeling of your warm cheeks.

“Well, you’re odd.”

“Odd?”

“Everything about you. Your movie tastes, your jokes, your ice cream flavors.” He hums, with a soft shrug. “It’s not a bad thing, I’m just.. Trying to figure you out.”

“You’d be the first to accomplish such a feat.”

He laughs at that, and he’s so beautiful.. That you cannot help yourself when you lean up and gently press a soft kiss to those beautiful pretty pink lips that had caught your attention that morning. He kisses you back, without hesitation.

You feel at peace for the first time in years, as if everything you had gone through, every moment of torture and pain, has been worth it because it leads you to this. To Handsome Matthew, who kisses you so tenderly that no matter how simple it is, you are left breathless and desperate for more. You lean into him, deepening the kiss, pushing him back a bit, his back pressed against the stacks. The book in your hands is crumpled, and eventually, Matthew pulls away, before pushing you back a bit.

“Easy,” He says breathlessly, and you need the reminder, because you try to catch your breath. Holy shit. “Easy, easy..” he repeats, his hands rubbing up and down your arms a bit. “I’ve got you, just breath.” He laughs, and you lean your forehead against your shoulder. Fuck.

“When can I see you again?” Is your only thought, and he chuckles gently.

“Whenever you want.” He promises, and you nod, before leaning up to kiss him again.

One day you’ll tell him everything. You’ll tell him all of the horrible things you’ve done and have had done to you, and you’ll tell him why the nightmares came, and why they won’t ever go away. One day, you’ll tell handsome Matthew why you sleep with a gun under your pillow and why you have no family and why you are so odd.

For now, you decide that you deserve a few nice things.

And when he kisses back, you realize that maybe he is just as infatuated with you as you are with him. Maybe. Maybe he is full of secrets and his own horrors that plague him while he sleeps, and maybe that’s the unspoken reason you are so deeply fascinated with one another.

Maybe.

Maybe you’ve spent the past ninety years going from fight to fight, to nightmare to nightmare. Maybe you’re owed some time in the sun with Handsome Matthew.

Maybe.

[cowboyemeritus]

Hi!!! I think you’re one of the best Ghost writers on this dang app! I wanted to request something, if that’s okay?

I’d love something about being fated mates with Copia. I’ve watched Nosferatu and I’m feeling the desire of some mighty powerful predestined pairings 😈

Thank you!

Hey! Thanks a lot - you’re too sweet. ❤️

Okay, yes, anon. I also saw Nosferatu and I hear you. I see you. Let’s fucking do this.

I originally had an idea for something cute, but evil Copia is too sexy powerful. Hope you enjoy :)

“How did you find me?”

Copia’s wide, beaming smile morphs into shocked confusion. He blinks once, twice, rebooting.

“I, eh-“ He huffs out an awkward laugh, scratching the back of his head. “I thought you would be happy to see me, amore. It didn’t hurt you like it hurt me?”

Every step away from him had felt like walking on broken glass. Of course it fucking hurt. But Copia had lost his mind — his humanity — and it had been unbearable. You would have fallen into that abyss, too, if you hadn’t left.

“How did you find me?” You can’t tell if you’re shaking with rage or with fear.

Copia smiles again. The sight at once makes your heart melt and your stomach churn. He gestures to his new suit, the collar, brooches, and grucifix glittering in the afternoon light. “I’m running the show now.” He takes another step closer and you flinch, your pounding heart skipping a beat. Your reaction has him pouting like a kicked puppy, but he persists. “Nothing can keep us apart. No Nihil, no Sister.” He chuckles. “Psaltarian is still around, but he always liked you.” The knife block is off to your left. The thought that you should arm yourself crosses your mind, but you remain frozen in place. Copia sighs. “Of course I was going to find you, cuore mio. Now we can finally be together, like we were always meant to be.”

Suddenly your eyes are stinging, then welling up. You curse yourself for the display of weakness.

“You’re insane.” He appears unmoved by the insult. “If you think I’d be anywhere near you after all that… that shit, then you’re out of your fucking mind.” At this, his once kind eyes darken. Something in them glimmers, ice cold and deadly.

“I did what I had to do to-“

“They were your brothers.” His white eye twitches.

“They were in the way-“

“Your fucking brothers!” Memories of the three bombard your psyche. You think of Primo and his garden of carnivorous plants, of listening to old ABBA vinyls with Secondo, and of Terzo, and his dreams of a better future. A tear finally spills over, carving a burning path down your cheek. “Do you even hear yourself?”

Copia, fists balled at his sides, takes a deep, steadying breath. He looks you dead in the eyes and it’s like there’s bugs under your skin, creeping and crawling and eating you alive.

And yet, those eyes. His face has changed, but those beautiful, soulless eyes are almost exactly the same. It’s a welcoming sight. The revelation makes you feel a little sick, but your resolve is already slipping. If he’s oblivion, then you’d gladly fling yourself into the void.

“Everything I have done,” he says, keeping his voice low and measured, “has been for you. For us. I have struggled, I have made myself a fool, and I have killed, all so that we could be together.” You sob.

“How dare you say that to me.” Your throat feels like it’s closing up. You sniffle, shaking your head. “You’re sick.” Knees giving out, you slide down the side of the counter, sinking to the kitchen floor. Copia is on you before you can resist, wrapping his arms around your frail, weeping form.

It’s like coming home.

“If I am sick, then I am sick with love for you.” He is so dreadfully good with words when he wants to be. A gloved hand finds your chin, lifting your head to look at him. The late-afternoon light hits just right, creating a golden halo around him that is so perfectly ironic. Copia: your guardian angel, your worst nightmare. It had been golden hour when you’d first met, him a spry young bishop and you a new Initiate, hungry for life and unaware of the strings of causality puppeteering you both.

Copia pulls you into him. He buries his face in your hair and inhales, a shudder running through his body. It’s a perverse gesture, but you don’t have the energy to protest. Years of running — from him, from the Clergy, from yourself, from destiny — have taken their toll.

“Every waking minute, I have thought of you.” He sounds almost like his old self, but something about his delivery is too smooth, too sure of himself. He must have practiced. “And every night, you have haunted my dreams.” You don’t doubt that; your days and nights have been very much the same. “I am meant for you, amore. I couldn’t let you go if I tried.”

All this profession does is make you cry harder. You are so unbelievably weak for him, it’s shameful. And he’s right — no matter how fast you run, no matter how long you hide, you two are bound to one another by forces far beyond your comprehension. You’ll always be pulled back in the end.

When you first laid eyes on him all those years ago, it felt like something had clicked into place. Now you understand why. It sends you reeling through all five stages of grief at once.

“I love you,” you whimper, tears soaking into Copia’s expensive-looking jacket. “I can’t not love you.”

“And I love you,” he coos, petting your hair just like he used to. “More than anything.” The years, the agony of it all, seems to melt away as you huddle on the floor, crying until you’re too exhausted to keep going. Copia never stops holding you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear like nothing between you had ever changed.

When your outburst finally ends, you pull away a bit. To your surprise, Copia lets you, instead taking one of your hands and pressing his lips to your knuckles. Instinctively, you know the warmth in his eyes is a facade, but you can’t help the butterflies that flit around in your stomach. Maybe if you pretend really hard you’ll go back in time, to before all this madness began and you were just two stupid kids in love. Wouldn’t that be nice?

“Come back with me.” You can’t tell if he’s begging or demanding it. “Come home. No more bullshit, I promise. You won’t have to worry about anything like that ever again.”

You don’t believe him.

“Okay.”

[mrs-stans]

For God’s Sake, Let’s Talk About a Different Movie

By Angelica Jade Bastién

For months, cinephiles have claimed to find substance in a certain body-horror movie. I am politely asking you to look elsewhere.

About 40 minutes into A Different Man, the face of Edward Lemuel, the striving actor played with wounded insecurity by Sebastian Stan, begins to fall off in reddened, meaty chunks.

Edward is a man with neurofibromatosis, which manifests most noticeably as tumors on his cheeks, forehead, and chin. In public, he is vigilant, picking apart the ways people gaze upon or ignore him, viewing himself from the outside like a passenger in his own story. In more private moments, he is awkward, needy, and hopeful, like in interactions with the burgeoning playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), who moves in next door. When he opts to participate in a drug trial whose clinicians market it as a cure, he accepts a cast of his face as a premature token of remembrance for when the drug proves efficacious. His is a kind of pathetic that inspires neither scorn nor pity, but a universal, sorrowful connection — his yearning for a different face is a consideration of what makes a human being legible and thus able to be understood, known, even loved. That Edward is a struggling actor only renders this consideration more acute.

As Edward’s fretting hands peel off the wet and bleeding parts of his post-trial face, the body horror is shown primarily in the darkened glass of a framed photograph. The chunks drop into his hands and he lets out gasps, and in each breath, Edward is reborn. The slim montage of transformation continues over the next three minutes, and a rhythm locks in place. He stumbles into his bathroom with a white undershirt stained with blood. He looks at himself with awe and confusion, observing whatever pockmarks and roughness still remain. His face itself is a liminal space: not quite who he once was, but certainly not who he will end up being. In the meantime, he spends evenings looking at Ingrid through his door’s peephole and eating microwavable dinners on the kitchen floor while inane whistle tutorial videos echo in his dingy apartment. Until one day, he closes the mirrored cabinet in his bathroom and confronts the face of a fully transfigured man.

Edward tentatively explores the city by foot with his new face. Shot from behind as he moves through the candy-colored lights of nighttime New York, his shoulders are hunched. He’s still on guard. When he sees his own reflection, he stands straighter. Marvels at himself. Is this what beauty feels like? The ability to take up more space without question? To look at yourself and not wince? As he spends more time with his handsome face, Edward decides to metaphorically kill his former self, taking on the new name of Guy — telling one of the doctors from the clinical trial who comes by his apartment that Edward is “really, really dead.”

Guy is a cutthroat Realtor with a spacious apartment who infiltrates new pools of society, auditions for the play Ingrid has written about her former neighbor (she doesn’t recognize Guy and Edward as the same man in ways that become increasingly hilarious and galling), and gets cast. That’s when a figure disrupts the new stasis of Guy’s life: Oswald, a charismatic Brit with neurofibromatosis, whose face is an echo of what Edward’s once looked like. But Oswald has none of the baggage Edward continues to heave around and is embodied with wit and charm by actor Adam Pearson, who actually has neurofibromatosis. Writer-director Aaron Schimberg spins a darkly comedic, profoundly existential, and gimlet-eyed film from this narrative setup, with Oswald eventually weaving himself intimately into Ingrid’s play, her life, and Guy’s imagined future.

When I first watched A Different Man, my mind immediately turned to The Substance. The Coralie Fargeat–directed body-horror onslaught is pure blunt-force trauma, a cocktail that is one part fairy tale, two parts hagsploitation, focusing on a woman named Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a former Oscar-winning actress who hosted an aerobics morning show for decades before getting unceremoniously fired for the sin of turning 50. That’s when she’s introduced to an underground product that offers people a way to recapture their youth and become “simply a better version” of themselves.

Elisabeth injects herself with a neon-green liquid, only for a younger, prettier version of herself to be birthed bloodily from her back in the form of Sue (Margaret Qualley). They must switch places every seven days to maintain the balance of their dual existence; one body remains conscious, the other unconscious, spinal fluid crassly transferred from Elisabeth to Sue for stabilization. As Sue rockets into the stratosphere of fame, auditioning for and nabbing Elisabeth’s old role, the older woman watches from the sidelines as the younger one disregards their time limitations and forces Elisabeth to age into a cartoonish elder so grotesque the characterization dovetails into cruelty.

These movies do not invite neat one-to-one comparisons, but The Substance and A Different Man — released last year within a few months of each other — are two films inadvertently in conversation. They play with similar thematic terrain: doppelgängers, the body, disability, self-loathing, misguided desire, nihilism bred from consistently looking outside yourself for a definition of who you are. Both won awards when they premiered at film festivals; Stan earned the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at Sundance, Fargeat got the Best Screenplay award at Cannes. Both lead actors won Golden Globes for their work, giving committed performances set in hyperstylized worlds (the former existing in a fun-house, ’80s-inflected version of Hollywood inhabited by hopeless image-obsessed women; the latter in the conniving, parasitic world of New York theater).

Moore and Stan have also been nominated for Academy Awards, though Stan is being recognized as a Best Actor nominee for his far less impressive work in The Apprentice. (That Pearson wasn’t nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category is a discussion for another time.) In the public eye, The Substance is the comeback contender that could earn Moore what many perceive to be an overdue accolade. Yet it’s only A Different Man (nominated only for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and up against The Substance in that category) that has anything meaningful to say. One of the biggest sins of this Oscar season is that critics and audiences are projecting upon Fargeat’s movie a substance it doesn’t actually have.

Where The Substance is unrelentingly direct, A Different Man is deliberately slippery. Where The Substance’s camp is too enamored with itself, causing it to trip into self-seriousness, A Different Man has genuine pitch-black humor wrung from discomfort and angst. Where The Substance is engaged in surfaces, bolstered by tremendous prosthetic work and special effects, A Different Man plunges into the murky depths of its characters, rendering the fallout of its lead character’s transformation as far more subterranean. Moore appears in mirror scenes not unlike the ones that occur in A Different Man, though in Fargeat’s the camera pores over Moore’s every feathery wrinkle, every ripple of flesh under harsh bright-white light. Let’s keep it buck; Demi Moore looks amazing at 62 years old thanks to all the privileges at her fingertips. But the camera sneers at her, creating a distancing effect that undermines the complexity of Moore’s performance. For all the film’s interest in the body, it has a remarkable lack of intimacy. The closer the camera gets to a legible face, the less you see of a soul.

Meanwhile, A Different Man’s camera treats the body’s appearance and movements as the richest way to connect. The body is still a site of horror, as the single sequence of Edward’s transformation implies. But more crucially, the body is rendered as a consistently fraught site on which identity is fomented and complicated, turning Schimberg’s film into a slyly constructed and powerfully caustic doppelgänger tale. Late in the film, Edward finds himself at a karaoke spot with Oswald. Against a backdrop of glittering red tinsel, Oswald performs a rendition of “I Wanna Get Next to You,” by Rose Royce. While everyone vibes to Oswald’s crooning, Edward’s face is masked with confusion. His eyes jut around, searching for a truth with which he can’t come to terms. In real time, through Stan’s pellucid physical performance, the audience experiences Edward coming to an understanding of the gulf of experience standing between him and Oswald. Edward has everything people have been culturally told in this country to desire: money, a social life, sex. But none of these gives him meaning or pleasure. It’s as if his own truest desires remain incomprehensible.

Meanwhile, Oswald lives a capacious life in spite of the very disorder Edward believed doomed him. Pearson plays Oswald with a light-on-his-feet charisma that becomes a stunning counterpoint to the heavy sorrow of Stan’s performance. It’s the most revelatory decision in the film, allowing Schimberg to bypass simplistic moralism about disability. The further Oswald encroaches upon Edward’s new existence, eventually swooping into the role Edward was meant to play on Ingrid’s stage and ultimately disrupting his romantic relationship with her, the more it dawns on Edward that his problem wasn’t his face but something more tricksy.

By contrast, there is no real pleasure in existing within any body in The Substance. Even when Sue, jejune and perfectly calibrated to modern beauty standards, stumbles onto her feet after tearing through Elisabeth’s back, she admires herself the way the camera does: with a leering quality, reflecting a hunger with no end. The visual language of The Substance is rendered in the machinations of gleaming advertisements meant to trade upon the fears embedded in women by a culture that argues death is preferable to aging. Fargeat adopts the dehumanizing gaze of 2000s beer advertisements or modern porn to heighten the exploitation of Sue’s dewy skin and taut figure, her eyes gliding over her own flesh, drinking herself in. Where the film sees abjection in Elisabeth’s body, it sees endless possibility in Sue’s.

But these possibilities are a closed circuit. All Sue desires is more. More youth, more beauty, more fame. That those possibilities curdle into exploitation is a result of Elisabeth’s own making. The film roots women’s problems not in the patriarchy that ushers them into single-minded desires, but in their choice to remain young — as if they really have a choice. Ads like Carl’s Jr.’s are unsubtle seductions, but what is The Substance trying to seduce its viewers into experiencing and considering otherwise? These aren’t characters but containers for derision.

Schimberg’s characterization looks outward as much as, if not more than, inward. His work here demonstrates a remarkable interest in the ways the ideas we hold of ourselves clash into the reality of other people. His direction, the script, and Reinsve’s performance in particular explore the extractive ways of artists who worm their way into the lives of others and steal meaning for material. While having sex one night in the hushed darkness of her apartment, Ingrid asks, “You have the mask? Put it on,” referring to the cast of his face taken by the clinical doctors before he was “cured” of neurofibromatosis, which he used to audition for Ingrid’s play. Edward balks, “Why?” “Just do what I tell you,” her tone harsh enough to bruise. Edward tentatively goes into another room and returns naked save for the mask entrapping his face. When they start having sex again, Ingrid erupts in laughter. “This is so fucked-up. You look ridiculous!”

Scenes such as this reveal A Different Man to be the best kind of doppelgänger story — each figure brought to life in tight performances, offering enclosed, fully realized emotional and psychic realms. Stan often wears a strained, venomous smile when around Oswald, but the only person it’s poisoning is himself. You’re constantly waiting for him to succumb. And he does. After losing the role in Ingrid’s production — which goes on to find great success with Oswald in the lead — he crashes a performance, wearing the mask of his old face. His attempt to strangle Oswald leads a large prop door hanging above the stage to fall and crush Edward’s limbs, which are henceforth contained in thick casts. Oswald and a now-pregnant Ingrid handle Edward’s care, with his anger and dejection only growing. After his in-house physical therapist makes a remark about how the hell Oswald got with Ingrid, Edward snaps, stabbing the physical therapist and killing him in a sloppy fight in the kitchen.

The Substance ends in an even more violent fashion: a parade of blood and viscera involving Elisabeth’s fully deformed body and the consequences of Sue using the substance on herself. The finale recalls Brian Yuzna’s 1989 flick Society; The Substance is nothing if not committedly referential, though it never quite synthesizes its inspirations to give us new language in the forever fraught conversations around women and aging, or even what horror can do as a genre. After all, bodies in The Substance aren’t venues for truth but obfuscation, suffering, and self-loathing. Every body in Fargeat’s film is a hall of mirrors caving in on itself. When you take a look at the shards, it’s clear they’re reflecting nothing at all.

A Different Man has a coda to the violence Edward impulsively remakes his life with. Edward, out of prison, much older and graying, runs into Oswald — or, more accurate to their dynamic, Oswald runs into him. They decide to have dinner at an upscale sushi restaurant with Ingrid by Oswald’s side. “I’ve achieved everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m ready for the next phase,” Ingrid says about her decision to retire as a famed playwright and move with Oswald to a nude commune in Canada. Oswald calls Edward by his real name, confirming that his arrest would have finally outed the true identity of Guy. “Oh, my old friend, you haven’t changed a bit,” Oswald says, as Edward’s face fills the screen, Stan’s tight smile and gaze directed at the camera. Edward is paralyzed by the realization that shedding your skin, your name, and your history isn’t transformation but a futile disavowal. Written upon the bodies of the characters in both these films is a story their respective filmmakers obsess over, but only A Different Man understands that there’s narrative potential under the skin.

[essentiallyleaf]

day 05. thigh riding. with. sullyoon.

1689 words.

tags. 

kinktober ‘23, idol x male reader, subby girlfriend sullyoon, photographer reader who gets dommy at some point, the reader is kind of a dunce in this one, i’m sorry reader, the writer is kind of stupid, and a bully, a decent amount of floof methinks, thigh riding, a note of ass play, and a note of feeding/oral fixation maybe?, squirting, freestyle punctuation, basically unedited.

notes.

i don’t know, it’s all up in the air, really. ignorantly, leaf.

“That’s not fair, you promised we were gonna play today!” Yoona whines while stomping her feet on the parquet.

“I said we were going to play today, after I’m done with work” You correct her, matter-of-factly.

You know how much she cares. This is the first time you’re not traveling when she has a weekend off in months. She just wanted to spend it together. Maybe bake with you, and end up throwing flour and chocolate powder on each other, maybe make blue and sand colored beads, have them break and crawl on the floor attempting to fetch them for the next twenty-five minutes, and definitely have extra-long sessions of lazy sex, through meals, through bathtime, through her playing Zelda, then passing you the Switch, then through you playing Zelda. That’s what she was looking forward to doing today. To you, the fact that you can’t spend a lovely and horny weekend with your girlfriend because a client decided, the day before the deadline, that they needed the photos to “look younger, fresher!” and that the best way of accomplishing that was adding a comic book filter on them and changing all the fonts to resemble those “BOOM!”’s and “POW!”’s that your grandfather used to read while HE WAS FIGHTING THE GREAT WAR, mr. Russo! Because “that’s what kids are into these days! Superheroes!”??? And your grandfather is DEAD.

To you - as I was saying - that felt unfair. But to Yoona, whose pouting face looks sooo cute, the expectation of a weekend of fun with her boyfriend was a fair one. And as you recognize that, you realize that with your dismissive answer you were being kind of an ass.

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay?” You pat her shoulders and back, then stroke it softly as she looks down at her feet. They’re naked, just like the rest of her legs, she dropped her pants as soon as she got in your apartment, as per her habit. It started with her wearing oversized shirts (usually yours) with no shorts underneath for comfort reasons, then the tees quickly got shorter and shorter and now she’s just wearing a white cropped top and a pair of light pink panties with a tiny tiny bow in the center, leaving her entire stomach and a good half of her buttcheeks for all, or rather just for you to see. “You wanna take some selfies on the Polaroid while I finish?”

You have plenty of cameras, but that’s the one you bought for her. It’s so hip, and trendy, she said. You told her she could bring it wherever, and take pictures of the places she visits (last year she went to Japan with two of her girl friends, it was beautiful, she said, but she didn’t take many pictures; you didn’t go because you were on one of your work trips in Malaysia, and you took way too many) but Yoona wanted to leave it in your house, for “I only care about photos where I’m with you”.

“I already have…”

You are certain she made sure you were somewhere in the background of the shot, as she always does when she takes selfies.

She puffs her cheeks while pouting. She’s too adorable not to look at and too bored to sit idle on the couch for another God-knows-how-many hours. Two problems to solve.

“You wanna come sit on my lap while I work?” Sounds like a win-win.

She nods cutely. You sit at the living room table (the lighting is best here) and she follows you. Instead of sitting with her back towards you, or perpendicularly to you, though, she straddles one of your shorts-covered thighs, facing you, the exposed part of her buttcheeks in direct contact with the skin of your knee. You look at her puzzled, and maybe a little suspicious. She just smiles. That’s good enough for you. She just wants to look at you in the face, you think. Add another adorbs point to the count (4? Just about her average per 5 minutes).

As you start working, laptop in front of you, water and a tangerine on the side, she tucks her chin in your shoulder and wraps her arms around you. Then you feel a subtle movement on your thigh. It starts as a small pressure, her body seemingly getting heavier and heavier on you, and then slowly gaining speed on the sagittal axis, getting broader with each swing.

“Baby…”

She doesn’t respond, only moves her hands from your lower back up to your shoulders and widens the radius of her pendulum. You think you know where this is going.

“Yoonagi~”

She stops immediately, seemingly getting out of her trance. That’s the pet name you gave her; must have been a reward for record adorbs points in a day.

“I won’t bother you,” (while I keep doing what I'm doing, is the part of the sentence that’s only silent), she pulls her head back to look you in the eyes, the cutie pout is still there (5). “Please?”

“Try not to move too much” - says the guy who’s letting his girlfriend hump his leg while he’s editing photos on his laptop and definitely doesn’t need his hand to be firm or steady; Alexa play Scooby-Doo villain type plan - she pulls the one leg of your shorts up to your groin, then lifts herself up just enough, and, with the most innocent smile on her face, she drops her pink panties to the floor.

She returns exactly to the position she had moments ago and resumes her routine right from the point where she left it. The only difference is, you can feel your girlfriend rub her skin on yours, with its warmth and its texture, and now your thigh feels humid.

“Feel good?” You take your hands away from the laptop and mouse for a second and sit back to peel your tangerine. She nods, but not cutely this time (6), she’s completely absorbed in her pleasure and is trying her best to keep her eyes open and look at you as she does. That part is cute (6!). “I’m glad, honeybun”

You feed her a slice of tangerine, which she captures with her lips and stores into her cheek, then suckles on for a few seconds before chewing it. Adorbs (7). You go back to work.

As her lust builds up, and once her mouth is empty, she can’t help but let you know through a loud moan. And then about two or three more, you can’t count them exactly because they kinda connect and fuse together, but she sounds so heavenly and you’re - you’re supposed to be working. But at this point, who knows what you want more. To get your work done, and have the rest of the day for yourselves, or to help your little girl. To get her where she wants, and to make it feel as good as it can be. To make it feel earned.

“Hey! I need to concentrate though, so I’m gonna need you to be silent, honey, can you do that for me? I’ll touch you in the other hole while we play later, but now,” you place a finger on her lips. “Daddy needs Yoonagi to behave, is that alright?” (That’s the pet name she gave you; must have been because every adorbs baby needs a baby daddy.)

One time the two of you were having sex, you were half-sitting, she was on top. At some point you grabbed her plentiful, soft asscheeks to help her bounce on you. As you gripped them strongly, one of your fingers slipped on her puckered hole and without even thinking, you started teasing around it while her butt ricocheted on your lap. She came so hard that day. So hard that she started spasming and tearing up as you held her on your shoulder (“Did I hurt you?” You hadn’t. “Can you stand up?” She could, after a few minutes. “You wanna do it again?” She did).

It was then that you started sprinkling it here and there as a promise, as a reward. Not to control her, just to help her learn how to behave. And she’s had nothing but gains out of it.

Yoona keeps rocking back and forth on your thigh, only silent pants coming out of her mouth. She even locks her lips to avoid any spills, while her eyes are now permanently closed, focused on the target of reaching her now close at hand peak. You palm your girlfriend’s gorgeous tummy while adoring her lustful state. She puts a hand on top of yours and starts feeling you feeling her. Your thigh is shining with her wetness.

“I know it’s hard, but you gotta hang in there for just a couple minutes, understand? My baby girl is doing so great for me”

Still trying her best not to make noise, even when it’s obvious that it’s not to help you with the work that’s currently not even remotely passing your brain, Yoona takes both of your hands and puts them on her hips, her message wordless, but crystal clear. You swiftly drag her wide, huggable, baby-making hips forth and back, as the two of you unite in an unfittingly innocent, tongue-less kiss. A few pushes and a few pulls at this rabid rhythm and your girlfriend bursts in orgasmic pleasure, releasing a whole downpour that wets from your thighs and calves up to your crotch, her pelvis shaking violently and uncontrollably. Even through all this, she manages to keep her lips shut and not emit a sound.

“Good, good, such a good girl, my pretty baby made Daddy so, so, so proud,” you praise her as you hug her soft, meaty body and pat her head.

“Thank you… Thank you…” she pants out, tired. It takes her more than a couple minutes wrapped around you to regain her senses. And when she does, you think you hear her say in a satisfied tone:

“Haha, I won!”

“What?”

“I won. I played with Daddy. Even though you said no. And I won.”

-

footnotes.

eh. numbly, leaf.

[ilovebuckers5]

*•♡never be like you pt 3 ♡¸.•*'

nika muhl x cheerleader!reader

"I'm falling on my knees. forgive me, I'm a fucking fool "

word count - 2.3k

themes :

-angst if you squint

-smut

warnings :

-public sex

-fingering

a/n - sorry for how long it took me to post this. writers block was biting me in the ass. enjoy the smut!!! ( I did not spell check sooooo sorry)

the days between when I asked Nika to the concert and the actual concert were hell. all I could think about was her. and the occasional thought about what Farah was planning for fucking over Asher but that's for another day.

finally, it was the day of the concert. I had already ordered an outfit from about a million different websites but it came together perfectly. I was going to be basic and just where a purple skirt and a white top but the more I looked in online stores, the crazier (and shinier) my outfit got. I decided on a sparkly purple blazer and a black mini skirt with a matching black tube top. the only shoes I could find were purple doc martins so that's what I went with.

the moment I stepped out of my closet to show Farah my outfit, I was convinced that she dropped dead. her hands slammed on the desk she was sitting beside. she stood up and ran her hands over the shoulders of my blazer. "its so fucking good oh my God. I'm kind of mad at you actually. I wish I came up with this." her eyes and hands traced over my entire outfit in awe. before I could even look at myself in the mirror, Farah began taking way too many photos. "I'm sending these all the Nika." that's when I slapped the phone out of her hand.

i almost broke my nose diving for her phone to delete all the pictures. the last thing I wanted was for Nika to see me in a ridiculously glittery outfit with anything else done. if I was doing a big reveal for her then it would have to be when I'm fully ready.

while Farah changed into her outfit, which was a mystery to me, I started doing my makeup. the concert was in 3 hours from now and the venue was 1 hour and 30 minutes away. so as long as Farah didn't take forever getting ready, we would be fine. of course that's as long as Nika was ready.

------------------------------------------------------------

nika's pov

to be honest, I've only heard one Olivia Rodrigo song in my entire life. and its not like I hated it but it wasn't my type of music. but because I love concerts and y/n, I turned on a playlist with her music and started getting ready. me, Farah, and y/n had made a group chat just for this occasion. we barely talked in it, more of just updating each other on where the concert was at and what time it was. the only appropriate outfit I could find was a pair of black jean shorts and a purple tank top. when I tried showing a couple of the girls on my team, I've never gotten more disapproval. they forced me to get letters and designs ironed on the top so once the outfit was put together I had a purple tank top with the words 'sorry my guts spilled' on it with my shorts and a purple pair of Nike dunks that I had to borrow from Paige. oh yeah, the group chat was also used for outfit checks. so I got sent pictures of outfits on racks, hangers, beds, floors, and people. I couldn't care enough to do all that so I just sent a picture of my outfit once it was on me.

farah and y/n had to have been the most hyped up girls I've ever met. they couldn't stop spamming the group chat when they saw my outfit. it honestly felt nice. I didn't do much makeup because I knew how hot those stadiums got. I just put on some mascara and lip liner and I was ready to go. I didn't want to end up looking a mess afterwards, I guess the girls did though.

when I was getting ready, one song sort of stuck out compared to all the others. love is embarrassing. I kind of related to it. loves was never really my thing. at least in college it wasn't. love seemed like something that would get me distracted. as much as I adored seeing other couples out on dates and couples going to each other's event like sports games, it seemed well, embarrassing to me.

i tried to keep it like that.

the time that the girls spent getting ready on seemed to go by slower than ever. i found myself sitting on my bed and my couch and every other surface ever. when finally i got a text.

'we're here!'

i launched myself off of the ledge of my counter and grabbed my bag. i made sure to bring a couple extra water bottles and other necessities so that if anyone ran out, that actually wouldn't.

the moment i sat in the car, the energy shifted.

when i looked from afar, the girls were going back and forth with no music playing. as if one or the other was panicking about something. but when i got there, they acted normal as ever. weird.

"heyyyy! you ready?"

fatah squealed, shaking my shoulder. i smiled in return while nodding my head up and down.

"yess! let's go!"

i wanted to talk to y/n but she barely looked at me. i couldn't tell if it was out of fear or if she just forgot to say something but i knew it didn't feel that good.

the entire car ride was filled with the two girls informing me about olivia rodrigo's songs and who they are about and who she's dated. and to be honest i was pretty invested. more than any other artist. the girls knew every lyrics to every song and it made me feel out of place but i knew i'd settle in once i heard her live.

"oh my god and just a little while ago she released guts spilled!"

i couldn't help but tilt my head in confusion.

"what's that?"

the girls gave eachother a look as if they were about to stop the car and put on a performance of what 'guts spilled' is.

"it's like a bonus to guts! it has five new tracks that basically everyone was waiting for!"

i could tell that this was something y/n had been waiting to be asked about. the pure joy in her face and voice brought a light smile to my face. her eyebrows were raised and her eyes were open wide.

"i think you'll like obsessed and girl i've always been..." farah leaned back to look at me and whisper.

the rest of the car ride was pretty fun actually. we spent time memorizing lyrics. well. they spent time helping me memorize lyrics and eventually i got lost in the music, making the time on the road go by extremely quick. by the time we were at the stadium, i had basically learned all the lyrics to both of olivia's albums. farah and y/n were so proud.

this parking lot was more packed than any concert lot i've ever been to. i mean every single spot was taken. we had to park on the street and speed walk to the stadium. we got in after what felt like hours of checking bags and tickets and whatever. and once we were in? it was cold.

cold and mildy empty. we had gotten there around 40 minutes early so we found the pit and hung around until the entire stadium was full.

when the light went off, i felt the entire aura switch very quickly. there was a different artist opening. and while i had heard of olivia once or twice around social media, i had never heard of chappell roan. of course farah and y/n had because they began screaming every single lyrics. the music actually was bad so i started to dance along and hum to as much lyrics as i could understand.

finally there were purple lights flashing and olivia came out. i couldn't help but scream along with everyone because as much as i tried to hide it, i was pretty fucking excited.

------------------------------------------------------------

y/n's pov

i don't think i could express how badly i want to wrap my arms around nika just for her coming. we were basically strangers and she came to a whole concert with us. a normal person wouldn't just do that. nika would.

i won't lie, the way our shoulders bumped up against eachother while we were dancing and singing felt even better than hearing olivia rodrigo live.

there were even moments where the air was steamy but bearable. i'd take a second to look to the side and there nika would be, already looking at me as if she was waiting for our eyes to meet. she would nod her head, asking if she could take my hand without speaking. and of course i never denied. she held both of our hands in the air and jumped around to all-american bitch. i know she meant it in a "this is a girls moment" way but my head told me that she was holding my hand the way i had been wanting to for the past week.

none of this could leave my mouth of course. because one ; it was too loud for anyone to even hear my words and two ; it wouldn't be the best choice to confess my love to nika in the middle of a concert. so i shoved my thoughts and fluttery words right back down my throat and replaced them with song lyrics.

all of the thoughts in my head were bringing me to tears. the fact that i was actually in the same stadium as olivia rodrigo and the fact that i was in the same arm distance as nika muhl. and i couldn't even hold her how ive wanted.

then the scream happened. right before the scream in all-american bitch was about to happen, olivia stopped and told everyone to scream for themselves. and i knew exactly what to think about when i screamed.

i screamed about having to wait for nika even though it might not work out. i thought about the fact that our bodies were pressed together in the most platonic way possible. i screamed about the fact that i still had to sort shit out with asher when i got back to campus. and i screamed about the fact that nika had no idea.

in my head i was the loudest person there but i know i wasn't when all of the screams melted together into one.

then she played obsessed. my favorite. there were a good amount of Olivia Rodrigo songs that I did relate to and this was not one of them. I've never been obsessed with anyone's ex. I've never really...cared.

i remember when the song was first leaked on a podcast on Spotify it was the only thing I listened to for a while. I knew every lyric like the back of my hand even if I didn't associate them with my own life.

olivia had changed into a red body suit and she looked amazing. it shocked me how she sounded so perfect while dancing but that's just Olivia Rodrigo for you.

i noticed Nika getting even more loud during this song. she actually was singing the lyrics as if she had known them for months. I felt proud as fuck. are hands met again. we were jumping up and down to the beat of the drums, screaming together like we had been friends for years.

everything went by so quickly.

next thing I knew she had her hand around my waist while she tried to catch her breath. her head was closer to my hands then my face and she had a death grip on her own knee. her back lifted and fell as her heavy breaths slowly went away. i had my hand on her back, trying to make sure she was ok while the song continued.

when her head was back up at eye level the first thing she did was lean into my ear and whisper. "can I try something?"

i had never been more confused in my life until I nodded and felt her hand still lingering around my hips. her fingers grazed the skin that was open in the air. she had been pretending to be focused on the music while her hands slipped down my waist and under my skirt. my breath hitched when she used just her pinky to slide my underwear to the side.

"w-what are you doing?" I questioned, trying to pretend like I didn't want this to happen.

"oh shut up I know you've wanted me too."

i couldn't form words before she dipped two fingers in my pussy. I knew that I could be more vocal since the music was loud enough to drown everyone out but I still felt the need to stay quiet. from anyone elses view, you'd think we were just holding each other or holding hands while singing. Nika quickened her pace, already making me close. it felt like a dream. and it felt like three songs had already passed but by the time it was the bridge of obsessed, I was dripping all over Nika's fingers.

"f-fuck!" I whined out, making Nika cover my mouth with her lips. she didn't stop pumping her fingers in and out of my cunt but it felt like we were only kissing. like the only thing I could feel was her lips on mine and her tongue tangled with mine.

just as I was about to finish for the second time within 1 minute and 30 seconds, Nika pulled her fingers out of me and laid them on her own tongue, sucking them clean.

part of me was in disbelief of what just happened and the other part was fully aware.

"can we continue at home?"

i nodded eagerly, still not knowing what to say to her. I could tell by the smirk on her lips and how her hands were placed on her hips that she was real fucking proud of what she just did.

the rest of the concert was a blur to me.

[lostatsea-blog]

maybe ona is dead set on being cold to lucy, but she softens when she sees lucy struggling with just the one crutch and she remembers it’s her fault. lucy of course is also remorseful of how she acted but shes actually not trying to flirt. yet she can’t help being a natural flirt. lucy being nervous mentions the age gap and ona gets more confused but understands lucys pov. maybe?

Thank you for your suggestion to help break my writers block. As requested the next part of Battle Lines.

Battle Lines Part 3

Lucy Bronze x Ona Battle

No warnings but the ending with get a little fluffy.

Lucy’s POV

I don’t know what came over me or why I asked her to dinner on a not - date (that I am hoping I can turn into a date) but now I am stood in front of my wardrobe wondering what the fuck I have to wear that is the appropriate level of dressed for a non-date – date but the thought of Ona believing that I hated her had been too much.

The truth is, I had been captivated by her since Lucy Staniforth’s wedding. Her perfect smile, the way she crinkles her eyes when she is being silly, the perfect definition in her jaw; it had all made my heart flutter like I was a teenager. While I had dated quite a few women, I did not remember the start of those relationships feeling like this. We had chatted for hours like we had known each other all our lives and when we had danced, feeling her athletic body pressed against mine had set my pulse racing. I wanted nothing more than to feel her writhing beneath me as I explored every inch of her perfect skin but I was brought back down to reality very quickly by my friend Jordan, who reminded me that there was an eight-year age gap between us. Ona was too young for me, at the start of her career with the whole world in front of her; I was at the end of my career with more baggage than a girl Ona’s age needed to deal with.

I settled on a pair of tight black jeans, a white button down shirt and a pair of black boots. Checking myself out in the mirror, I decided to take just one crutch. If the physio’s knew they would go mad but two would get in the way. I had one chance to convince Ona that I was not a complete and utter fucking psychopath with multiple personalities. I glance at the clock and grab my keys to go and get Ona. The thing about playing for Barca is they own an apartment complex and so all the players live in the same building. Ona lives two floors down so I start to hobble my way there.

Ona’s POV

I glance at the clock for what must be the sixth time in the last 10 minutes and feel a fluttering in my stomach. I don’t know why I am nervous, after the way she has behaved there is no way anything is going to happen between us. I am simply going to allow her to say whatever it is she wants to say. We play on the same team, in the same position, we need to be able to get along. Tonight is about sorting things out enough to have a good working relationship – nothing more. I glance at my outfit in the mirror. I had settled on a pair of light blue jeans, white fitted t-shirt and a white shirt over the top. I wish I could say I had picked it out without care but the destruction of my bedroom would tell a different story. I am pulled from my thoughts by a knock at my door and the sudden racing of my heart takes my breath away. My body is reacting against my will because after the last few weeks, I am not letting Lucy off the hook. I just need to fix things enough so that we can work together.

As I pull the door open, I am met with the widest smile and I have to fight with myself not to return it. Instead I give her a friendly hello and grab my keys so that we can leave.

“The uber is 5 minutes away” she tells me. I nod and head towards the stairs. When I reach the door, it takes me a minute to realise that Lucy is a good distance behind me. Looking back, I see her struggling with her crutch. It is then that it dawns on me, she only has one with her. I watch her approach, every step taking a great deal of effort and I am flooded with shame once again. She is struggling because of me, because of my reckless tackle.

“Can I help you” I ask softly watching her hobble while wanting nothing more than to wrap my arm around her waist and support her.

She looks up and smiles at me again “It’s okay, this is not my first time test driving these things” she jokes as she reaches me, “drives a bit slower than I like though.” I can not help the giggle that escapes but I clamp down on it and nod as we continue to make our way outside.  

The restaurant that Lucy has picked is an Italian ten minutes from the apartment building. I imagine if Lucy hadn’t of been injured we would have walked it and with that thought, guilt once again gnaws at my consciousness. I watch Lucy struggle with her crutch as she gets out of the uber and have to force my hands inside my pockets to stop myself reaching out. My plan to stay professional seems to be dwindling fast. There is just something so innately charming about the English woman that sneaks through all of my carefully constructed defences.

Once we are settled at the table, I have to ask her about the crutch and why she only has one. She pauses a minute and I get that signature Lucy Bronze smirk before she replies

“Well, I would usually prefer to not take any on a date but being able to walk was important” she joked. At the words date I feel my face blush and I know she sees it too by the way her green eyes twinkle. Trying to save myself, I clear my throat

“I never agreed to a date – This is just dinner between colleagues” I insist but the heat in my face is not in any rush to cool down.

“If you say so” she winks and my face is now on fire along with the rest of my body. Needing to break eye contact I stare down at my menu – this woman is going to kill me before the night is out.

Lucy’s POV

I would be lying if I said the pink hue currently covering Ona’s neck and face did not fill me with a sense of hope. I can tell that Ona is trying to stay detached and distant but this proves to me that I have some sort of effect on her which is a massive boost to my confidence. I can also see that she feels guilty about my movement. I have caught her watching me a couple of times tonight and she seems to be forcing herself not to react.

I love this place; I found it randomly one night when I had taken myself out for a walk. I had been struggling to adapt to my new home and needed some space to clear my head. When I had stepped in the people had been so friendly and it did not hurt that they had some of the best pasta I had tasted in my life. Once the drinks and food had been ordered (both of us opting for the seafood linguini), I turned my attention to Ona. While I had joked about it earlier, seeing her so out of sorts hurts my heart – This is not the woman I met at Lucy’s wedding. That Ona was confident, charming and unapologetically herself. I wish I could turn back the clocks and handle things differently but that wasn’t possible; all I could do was try and repair some of the damage. Without thinking I reach out and place my hand on her arm to still her nervous actions and she looks up startled not expecting the contact. She doesn’t pull away though and allows my hand to rest on her arm.

“I’m sorry is not enough Ona and I know that” I say with sincerity “That night at Lucy’s wedding, the connection that seemed to be building between us was something I have never experienced in my life”

“You did feel it” her voice is barely a whisper but I catch it. I know my actions the last few weeks would have caused her to second guess out entire interaction and I have that I have tarnished those memories for her.

I waited and searched for her eyes and once she was looking at me I nodded “I felt it” I confirmed because she deserved that knowledge “After we went out separate ways, I felt like a teenager with the biggest crush on a cute girl” my confession makes her blush and I know instantly that I want to spend the rest of my life making this woman blush like that.

“I would have welcomed your attention” she says softly “You were not the only teenager after that night”

“I know you would have and that is why I had to pull away” I sigh and she looked both angry and confused. Gone is the soft smile and gentle eyes replaced by a fiery Spanish temper. If possible she looks even more beautiful when she is angry.  

“That makes absolutely no sense” she throws her hands up in frustration breaking the contact we’d had “You liked me, you knew I liked you so you had to destroy it”

“Ona” I sigh “You are 24 and I am 32” I say this like my point is obvious and this will automatically help her to understand but I am very wrong and her fury just intensifies.  

“So? You think I am not aware of your age or mine?” she demands “What has that got to do with you treating me like shit for months”

“You don’t think that age gap is too big?” I ask “You are at the start of your career and I am at the end of mine. You need someone who is at the same stage of life as you, who you can experience all of your highs with. Ona you are going to be the best in the world one day and you deserve to have your partner right alongside you. I thought if I pushed you hard you would realise, I am not good for you and then just battle me for right back – I never imaged I would cause you to feel the way you do”

The speech comes out rambled and I can see many different emotions crossing her beautiful features at each stage of my explanation but when I am finished, she just seems sad and that worries me. Maybe I pushed too far and maybe I cannot salvage this.

Ona’s POV

As I listen to Lucy’s speech, I am confused by my reaction. To listen to her talk about the end of her career is hard but with starting clarity I realise that she thinks she is not good enough for me. She thinks that she will hold me back.

“Who gave you these ideas?” I challenge with defiance and it is her turn to be shocked by my response “who told you that you were too old for me?”

“No one, Ona it is just a fact” Lucy replies

“merda” I huff out and I am amused by the way Lucy’s eyes wides in surprise. I don’t swear often but this situation makes me want to swear “merda – who?” I demand “The Lucy I was speaking to at that wedding isn’t the one I have had to deal with for months and I deserve to know why”

“A couple of my friends pointed out that it was cradle snatching” Lucy admitted “It made me second guess myself. I felt like one of those pervy older people who goes for women far too young for them”

“Do I not get a say?” I challenge again and again Lucy is startled but I need her to realise that I am not some meek, love-struck teenager. I am quite stubborn and I know my own mind “Did you not think to ask ME how I felt about the age gap”

“If I’d have asked you out, would you have said yes?” Lucy asks, that fucking grin back on her face. The grin that exudes confidence of a woman who knows she is going to get what she wants and I realise that every smile, every grin, every touch, every wink and every second of prolonged eye contact has been moulding me to her will. She has my hand in her own and I feel her fingers gently stroke my palm. I nod my response unable to form the words.  

“What if I ask you out now, will you say yes?” her words echo in my mind and I am lost in her eyes. This is the Lucy that I met at Staniforth’s wedding; this is the Lucy I have been searching for these last few weeks

“I am here aren’t I” I reply softly and it is her turn to blush

“So, this is a date?” she teases

“It is now” I reply gripping her hand a little tighter, in no rush to break contact. I know there are things we still need to talk about. I know we cannot brush the last few weeks under the carpet but I will also not deny myself what my heart and mind so clearly want. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would ever be on a date with my teenage idol or that said person would be looking at me like they wanted to do unspeakable things to me. For now, we would have to see how this date went.  

[blue-sadie]

Unpacking

Art Teacher Billy Hargrove x Student Reader x Music Teacher Eddie Munson Series Masterlist Part 5 of the Teachers Pet Series - OG @amber-michaelson Summary: collage can be stressful, and too of your high school teachers stopped by to help you destress Warning: double penetration

Yn/2nd person pov

I dropped the last box with a huff, placing a hand on my back leaning back till i heard the satisfying crack, i looked around the room the one side fill of untidiness of boxes and plastic bags while the other side lay bare 'guess I'm lucky' i shrug my shoulders adjusting my crop top my body tensed hearing someone clear their throat behind me.

I stumbled turning to fast on my feet "h-i hi" i smiled nervously as i pushed hair from my face as my eyes slowly drifted up the man infront of me, he wore black shoes and dress pants, a white button up, he held a clip board and pen, his platinum blonde hair was neatly pushed to the side, "are you Ms l/n" he asked his eyes blue eyes locking to mine.

I nodded my cheeks becoming a rosy pink "well Ms l/n I will be your English professor, I take it upon myself to read up on my students and I think it would benefit you to join my writing club, seeing that you are a writer" he carried his words proudly but had a hint of something else i couldn't describe.

He extended his arm handing me the clipboard that held a list which already was quite full a lot of the names being womans names "looks like your almost full" i glanced up at him as i was signing my name one of the corners of his lips curled up as he looked down stifling his laughter.

"I mean most of them I didn't have to ask" he murmured cockily, my gaze ran up and down the list again, a giggle left my lips seeing the amount of phone numbers and xoxos there were, i handed the clipboard back smiling "looks like you got your work cut out for you" i said a nervous laugh following, he chuckled his eyes locking to mine again, making me feel a weird sensation "well Ms l/n I'll make sure I can handle it" he smirked winking at me before he left.

I released a breath i didn't know i was holding, I bit my lip thinking over the interaction but got disturbed "hey angel" my eyes widened as Eddie stood in my doorway his cocky smile plastered on his face, I quickly ushered him inside and shut the door.

"What the hell are you doing here" I whispered yelled making him laugh as he crashed down on my bed, I opened my door to peer out to see if anyone saw only to come face to face with billy's barely clothed chest "hey baby" he winked, I face palmed as he pushed his way into my dorm giving a knowing nod to eddie who just gave him a goofy wave.

"What are you doing here" i asked for the second time my eyes following billy as he took a seat on the squeaky desk chair "can't we come see our favourite student" he raised his eyebrows grabbing a chip out of the bag i had opened earlier I shook my dead frequently "no no no" i said walking around the room making it a bit more presentable.

"Hiding us from your new teacher are you" I rolled my eyes looking back at Eddie who raised himself on his elbows "he was just introducing himself" i muttered making them burst out laughing 'yeah right' Mr Munson said between laughs my eyes travelled to Eddie hearing a crinkle noise slip from his jacket "what are you carrying" i asked.

He shuffled around taking a small plastic bag out of his jacket chucking it to me, my eyes widened seeing the bag of weed it fell to the floor with a soft thud "what is wrong with you" i gasped quickly kicking it over to billy who picked it up and opened it taking a sniff "that's the good stuff" he murmured I grumbled in disbelief.

"Love do you ever have fun" eddie asked raising himself from the bed and walking towards me his arms wrapping around me bringing me closer to him, his hard on pressing against my thigh "don't you wanna try new things" he lifted his hand to push hair out of my face "to live on the wide side" his voice dwindled as he stared into my eyes as he brought his face closer latching his lips to mine.

Billy came up behind us pressing himself to my back "don't leave me out baby" he said tugged my lips away from eddies and pressing his own against mine, eddie dipped down to my neck, their hands were running up and down my body tugging at my clothing till it was discarded on the floor.

"Your so pretty angel" eddie groaned looking down my body billy's hands grazed my skin as they came around my waist going down to my core, his fingers lightly scraping the soft skin, two of his fingers dipped inside sliding up and down my slight, i closed my eyes tightly leaning my head back against him a soft 'fuck' leaving my lips.

His fingers slipped inside pumping in and out "your still so tight" he breathed lowly his palm working against my clit as his fingers thrusted inside me, my jaw clenched trying to hold back my moans "is someone embarrassed" eddie chuckled his hands grabbing my breasts tugging and squeezing them i shook my head no.

"Then you should let out those pretty moans of yours" Billy said his thrusting fingers fastening, my eyes almost rolling back at the stimulation, eddie pinched my nipples making me let out a moan and the rest just followed "good girl" they groaned, billy pulled out his fingers making me whine and shake.

Mr Munson and Hargrove took off their clothes, their hardened cocks sticking out "jump angel" eddie gripped my thighs hoisting me up his cock entering me as soon as i settled "fuck" i moaned throwing my head back "already using profanities and i haven't even gotten in yet" billy smirked against my skin latching his lips to my neck.

Billy's cock pressed up against me his head slowly pushing in along with eddies, the stretch burned making me groan out, their mouths opened and breathed out in pleasure "holy shit" eddie grunted, their hips started to work their way out and in again.

Their slow thrusts slowly picked up the sound of skin slapping skin filled the room "you ok baby" billy asked but all i could get out was a chocked moan, i felt like a rag doll as they bounced me on their cocks, the stimulation was getting to much for me.

The familiar knot started to form in the pit of my stomach "fuck your tightening up" billy grunted his hands gripping me tighter, the heads of their cocks pulsed with anticipation their eagerness to cum "you about to come baby" i nodded frequently my head flew back against his shoulder as my moans heightened.

My body convulsed and shook as i released around their cocks my muscles clenching as my moans chocked, their pants and grunts ceased as i felt the warm liquid fill me up 'holy fuck' my head draped down my eyes closing in satisfaction.

"You will always be our favourite student and we'll be more than happy to fill you up"

[qwimblenorrisstan]

Assigned | Alex Mason x Reader

Summary: Mason gets a new assignment, you, a woman under witness protection, and gets a bit too attached to you, too quickly.

Word Count: ~4.2k

Warnings: smut, fingering, p in v, wall sex?, mild overstimulation, mentions of death, violence, strangulation, gun violence, very minor character death, fem!reader, blood, mention of 9/11, flashbacks, mentions of suicide, PTSD, cuddling, they sorta barely know each other but whatever

Minors, do not interact!

A/N: this was a lovely request from @leavemealoneplsandthx , honestly I don’t think this is good since writers block hit me like a freight train and it took me nearly a week to get it done, but I hope you can still enjoy<3

Requests are open!

His feet echoed against the marble floor, numbers, and voices clawing at the edges of his vision before he willed them away with a patience he’d been forced to learn.

It felt like it had been years since he’d been here, though he knew it had only been months.

The U.S. Capitol.

“As you know, your assigned staff psychiatrist, Dr. Adrienne Smith, and Chief Analyst, Ryan Jackson, have both determined you to be unfit at this moment to re-enter full service just yet.”

His shrink. Threatening suicide to her just to get his way hadn’t done him a favor.

And Jackson. That wasn’t a new name, he’d heard it before, probably just in emails and mission reports.

Mason was fit for service. He knew he was. He was in shape, mentally sound on a good day, he could hold a gun and he knew how to slit a throat. If Hudson would just send him back out—just for a moment, with Woods, he could—

“We’ve found you a new assignment, to keep you…occupied.”

Hudson’s nearly flat voice had almost a hint of suspicion, maybe even worry, though Mason had personally never seen Jason Hudson worried over anything simple, as it echoed around the large room they passed through, its dome-shaped roof with a painting at the top, the Apotheosis, it’s angels staring down at him with judgment.

Not like it mattered.

He already knew he wasn’t going to Heaven, anyway.

Forcing his mind to refocus, he narrowed in on Hudson, his own legs carrying him after the man, the itchy material of a suit annoying him. Hudson was also clad in a suit, the man having shaved for once, smelling of expensive cologne and aftershave. His head was smooth enough that Mason could probably see his reflection in it if he looked hard enough.

His eyes shifted to their surroundings, the marble carving as they left the rotunda room, shined dress shoes clacking against the floor a bit louder than Alex would’ve preferred.

Marble was everywhere, the white staining his eyes until he blinked, and then suddenly, they were at the door. He’d been here before.

A room. A round table, and as he walked in, he was greeted by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The numbers clawed at his mind, static from TVs surrounding a chair, electric shocks worming their way through his mind, secure keys, ascend from darkness, reign fire, unleash hordes, skewer the beast—wield iron—raise hell—freedom—

“Focus, Mason.” A familiar low, rustic voice with a Russian accent murmured.

No, it was George H.W. Bush sitting in that chair in front of him, Hudson gestured for Mason to step into the room, to take a seat after a simple salute, and Alex did.

“Mr. President.”

Hudson said with a nod, and Mason gave a little nod himself, shaking Bush’s hand.

The man looked analytical, watching, surely careful after the recent terrorist attack. The Twin Towers were ruined, and the Pentagon hit, though they were still attempting to cover it up, thousands dead and more injured.

An absolute mess.

“Mr. Mason, I understand that you are the best we currently have available for this.”

The door shut behind them, but Mason could still feel Hudson behind them. Not risking anything, not after the JFK incident. He could already see it in his head, Hudson’s hand on his pistol, finger all too ready to pull the trigger.

The door opened. Someone else stepped in, the pat of feet against the carpet reaching his ears, just as he stood and turned, reaching for a gun at his waist that wasn’t there, as he’d been banned from having weapons within the White House years ago.

Hudson was equally as alert, but visibly relaxed, giving Alex a clear motion to sit back down and settle as a woman entered, face hidden under the hood of a long jacket, guards on either side of her, and stood almost expectantly as the doors closed.

Bush stood, shaking hands firmly with the woman, before turning to Alex.

“This is…”

He paused, before shaking his head and continuing.

“You’ll know her as Sydney Harper. She is, at this moment, and for the foreseeable future, under extreme witness protection, as a witness to the killing of someone…important. That’s all you need to know.”

His new assignment. To babysit someone who’d witnessed a murder. If it had been him, he would’ve just put a bullet in your head and been done with it, no witnesses.

Mason had done witness protection only once before, and his assignment had ended up dead after running off on their own, claiming the measures they went to were too extreme.

Alex stood, going to shake your hand, only to be met with possibly the most wet-fish handshake he’d felt in quite a while.

“A pleasure, Mrs. Harper.”

Not your real name, surely, but witness protection meant you had an entirely new identity.

Not just a new identity, you’d need a new job, new interests, new hobbies, new clothes, everything. Witness protection was always a pain in the ass, especially for him.

Hudson cleared his throat, adjusting his dark shades to sit better on the bridge of his nose, giving a pointed glance to Mason.

“Mason, this is your assignment.”

And that was the nail in the coffin. No more missions for him, just this assignment.

Well, if his job was to protect you, then he’d do a damn good job at it, at least.

~

“So you’re…what? My professional babysitter?”

You asked, looking at the man across the table from the house you’d been taken to. Your ‘home’ now.

Files sat on the table, backstory, information, medical history, credit card info, everything about your supposed new life stored away so sterile and impersonally it almost stung.

Your name? Completely changed. Everything was changed, most likely done by a bored CIA department worker.

They’d find you a job in the future, according to Hudson, the bald man you’d talked with, and give you insurance, a salary, and more for you to “blend in” so nobody found who you were. Everything you’d loved about your past life was gone, however, so was the society that had always been suppressing you.

You were still adjusting, as culture shock settled in, to the newer freedoms you were allowed.

Where you’d previously been? It was nothing like now. And though the United States had its problems, its freedoms gradually disappeared as corrupt figures took over, at least you had the bare minimum of rights here.

You at least had the First Amendment, until they took those.

Until you fully adjusted and learned to blend in, your job was simply to stay alive, and unnoticed.

“Essentially, yes.”

The man looked bored, but paying attention, his eyes going around the room, identifying entrances and exits, though you didn’t know it. His hair was slicked back, the faint smell of a cheap gel coming from him.

He stood with his arms crossed, occasionally readjusting the sleeves of his shirt, having changed into some jeans, a loose shirt, and a black leather jacket that looked as if it had been through hell and back. A poor attempt at looking civilian, in your opinion, but god knows the man, “Mr. Mason”, as you’d heard him being called, looked like he wasn’t used to being anywhere other than a battleground.

“And you are…?” Your voice trailed off, looking him up and down, finding him to not be terrible eye candy, despite his shockingly stiff demeanor.

You at least wanted to know the name of your glorified babysitter, especially if he’d be stuck by your side for the next few months, years, or god knows how long.

He seemed a bit surprised by that, glancing up at your eyes, looking for the intent behind that question. He’d expected you to be frazzled, maybe quiet, withdrawn from witnessing a brutal murder, but you seemed quite the opposite.

Snapping at him, demanding, he found that he quite liked it. A woman of your caliber wasn’t one he found often.

“Alex.”

He answered simply, grabbing your new ID from the table, studying it for a moment, and slipping it into one of the many pockets of his pants. Your brows wrinkled as you tried to snatch it out of his hand before it was shoved away, failing.

“What was that for? That’s my ID, you know—“

He waved a hand dismissively, moving to the door of the small apartment the two of you were staying in for now.

“Yeah, yeah, got it, hon. I oughta start charging you for all these questions.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, I don’t even have any money!”

You slid your old shoes on quickly, running after him, his brisk walking pace combined with his long legs not exactly helping you keep up.

“I accept payment in other methods.”

He quipped back, raising a brow at you, the sass in his tone evident.

Maybe he wasn’t as boring as you’d thought.

You didn’t bother to bite back a scoff, looking at him as if he was insane, the both of you moving to the streets.

“Oh, please, I'm not that desperate,”

You retorted, glancing at the front of a store, as Alex led you inside, taking a deliberate step closer to you until you could almost feel his body heat against yours. His hand slipped around your arm, till the two of you were linked together like a middle school couple in the hallways.

Wondering if he was normally this protective over his assignments, you mused to yourself as you watched him immediately find the people in the shop, studying them, ensuring they weren’t a threat.

He must’ve seen your mouth about to open, because he answered what he’d assumed was about to come out of it.

“You’re going to need new clothes. Your old shit ain’t gonna cut it, we need something you’ll look “natural in”.”

The last bit of the sentence was said almost sarcastically by him, in a way that made you let out the slightest snort of amusement.

“I’m guessing that last bit is from Hudson?” You asked, amused, and he threw a small hint of a grin back your way, all the while leading you up to the women’s section.

There were racks upon racks of clothing, all of which seemed nice, the sort of comfortable that you would wear to a laid-back church, but also relax in at home.

Dresses, shirts, jackets, sweaters, pants, skirts, socks, even bras and panties, and a few selections of shoes awaited you. A worker was nearby, wearing a company uniform, tidy and neat.

Her blond hair was curled in beach waves, and she held a cigarette between her fingers, fluttering her lashes at you two—more notably, at Alex, as she let out a small giggle at the sight of you.

You thought she sounded like a squirrel high on cough medicine. Alex didn’t seem any more impressed than you. This time, your hand was the one to possessively slide around his arm, a strained smile filled with poison as you looked at the worker.

“Oh, well aren’t you two a cute couple—need any help..finding anything?”

For some reason, you didn’t want to tell her that you two weren’t a couple. Mason didn’t say anything either, gaze pinning the woman down in a way that didn’t even seem vaguely friendly.

“No thanks.”

He spoke carefully, his words measured with a sharp, precise calm that seemed unnerving even to you. The girl must’ve caught the hint, walking away as her shoes clicked against the floor.

A sound you liked.

Alex glanced down at your grip on his arm, your nails digging into his skin, leaving little crescent half-moons, and cast you a glance, amused and knowing, though a hint of his earlier eeriness remained.

“You’re enjoying this.”

You hissed at him, letting go of his arm and giving his foot a solid stomp on the toes, only for nothing to happen, as he was wearing steel-toed boots. Of course.

“Can you blame me?”

Military men.

Moving away from the living, breathing headache of a man you might’ve grown a bit attached to, you began looking through the clothing, trying to find something at least presentable to wear that was comfortable too.

He stayed by your side, achingly close, as you skimmed through a few of the lighter dresses, appropriate for the hotter weather that would probably be upcoming in this area. If you were going to get new clothes, they would at least fit the weather here.

“That one’s pretty.”

Alex spoke, gesturing to a floral dress, and he wasn’t exactly wrong. Its colors would match you, and it seemed the right fit.

But you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.

Looking it up and down, you grabbed it, evaluating it, until shrugging.

“It’s alright, I can try it on later.” He stayed nearly stuck to your side for the next thirty minutes, at some point his eyes lingering on that same worker, watching almost too carefully for your liking.

You glanced over at him, finally having picked out all of the clothing you were willing to try on, and potentially buy, only to catch him staring again. This time, he glanced at you, obviously seeing the pissy look in your eyes, and his brows furrowed a bit. Almost confused.

“I’m going to go try these on. Have fun staring at her all day.”

Maybe his neurons finally connected, because he opened his mouth to speak, maybe explain himself, until you stormed off, going to the changing room, hanging the clothes you’d picked out on the hangers.

You decided to try the dress he’d picked out first, maybe just out of spite, the venom churning in your stomach, or the fact that you hoped it looked awful on you just to get back at him.

Slipping your shoes off, you tugged your clothes off, leaving only the underlayer on, and moved to slip on the floral dress. The fabric was soft and a bit stretchy, letting it easily mold over your body, tight in the right places, but there was a pair of buttons on the back you just couldn’t get your hands on.

Sighing, you turned around, brushing your hair out of the way, looking at your back in the mirror to try and help with the buttons, failing miserably even at that.

If you had someone to help—just a bit, even Alex, as double-sided as he was, flirting with you then not keeping his eyes off of another woman, would be useful in this situation.

As if on cue, you heard footsteps entering the rows of stalls of changing rooms. Surely, it was Alex. The store hadn’t been too occupied when the two of you had entered, and it was likely him just trying to follow after you.

“Alex, can you come help me button this?” You called, and only silence rang out in the bathroom. A hint of embarrassment, that maybe it hadn’t been him, rose, but before it got far a knock sounded on your stall.

The small feeling that something was wrong hit, but you pushed it down, holding the back of the dress together with your hand as you slid the lock of the stall open.

It wasn’t Alex.

The sting in your face registered before the man before you, the one that you definitely knew was not Alex Mason, did in your mind. Then, you came to the realization that he’d hit you, and everything seemed to move in a blur, time slowing as you watched him move into the small stall-like room, pushing the door closed as he slipped a small, black gun out of his jacket.

Panic kicked in, your sympathetic nervous system kicked in as fight or flight took over, and common sense flew out of the window.

You tried knocking the gun out of the man’s hands, all the while moving forward and kneeing him in the crotch, his face blurring as you focused on the gun, hell, you’d later find you would barely be able to recall what he’d looked like at all, panic overriding everything else.

He let out a grunt, the gun being knocked loose, clattering to the floor, and you both lunged for it, him elbowing you as pain sparked through your nerves, and you biting the elbow that made contact with your face as hard as you could.

Your hand was close—just a few more inches—

He struggled to his feet, forgoing his earlier goal of grabbing the gun as he instead wrapped a burly arm around you in a headlock, squeezing your Carotid arteries and cutting off the flow of blood from your brain.

You tried yelling for help, finding no sound would come out at all. Your nails clawed at his arms, trying to pull them off to no avail.

Attempting to reach for the gun with your foot, you managed to get the tip of your sock on it, before the man grunted and kicked it behind him.

The dark spots in your vision grew bigger, the world turning to dizzy blotches of color as you tried to breathe, lungs burning, head throbbing. You couldn’t last much longer.

Just before you nearly succumbed to the lack of oxygen, you heard the smallest sound, though everything sounded as if you had cotton balls shoved in your ears, and it was of a gun cocking.

Your arms went limp, and the silenced weapon fired.

“Jesus—“

A familiar voice—Alex’s voice—spoke, shoving the man off of you. You took a gasp of air, throat aching and sore, as your lungs burned with each intake of air.

Your hands were shaking as you grabbed ahold of Alex, vision coming back in little spurts as you nearly hyperventilated, looking at the body of the man on the floor, now registering the full details of his appearance.

He’d been tall, taller than you at least, with dark hair and an unkempt beard, now with a bullet hole lying between his furry brows.

A little trickle of blood slid down his nose in horrifying detail, before Mason forcefully turned your head away, and you heard a shuffling noise, another stall opening and closing, and when you looked back the body was gone, and Alex stood before you with his arms crossed.

“You don’t get to run off like that—not when things like this can happen,”

He began, not even bothering to avert his gaze from your body, seeming to rather enjoy the look of the dress that hadn’t even yet been buttoned on you.

“Oh, right, as if you weren’t distracted by the employee, if I hadn’t known better I’d think she was your assignment.”

You snapped, hand going to pull the back of the dress together again as you gave him a look. His eyes narrowed as he took a step toward you, though not threatening, he knew better than to try and threaten you after such a close call.

His head tilted slowly to the side, in almost mocking curiosity.

“You thought I was trying to flirt with her?”

The words made that hint of embarrassment flare up again, the fact that you already felt a claim of ownership over a man you’d only met a day ago.

“Am I wrong?”

A step closer. You were up against the wall, swallowing thickly. He was mere inches away from you, breath fanning against you.

“You’re my assignment. She wasn’t.”

Wasn’t. Not isn’t.

He was closer, so so close, until you could smell the subtle hint of pine and snowy wilderness surrounding him, an intensity in his eyes.

You leaned forward, hands timidly going out to touch him, one landing on his shoulder. He stiffened as you slid your hand up his neck, all the way until cupping his cheek, hesitancy danced in his eyes as he tried to hold back, faltering when you leaned in just a bit more.

He reciprocated, gently pressing his lips against yours, before pulling back again.

For a moment, the air seemed still, and both of you simply stared in something like shock, until he reached forward, his calloused hand sliding to the back of your head as his lips collided with yours again, this time not gentle, a fierce kiss.

You leaned in, head spinning as your hands pawed at his jacket, sliding down his chest as his tongue shoved between your lips, being met by your own until your fingers caught on his belt.

Both of you pulled away only a moment to take a gasp for air, you being breathless for a different reason than a few moments ago. A much better reason, now.

“We shouldn’t..”

You breathed out as his hands went to his belt, yanking the metal clasp open and off, tugging the belt off and the front of his pants down. His brows furrowed as he palmed the bulge in his boxers, his hands soon moving to the back of the dress.

“But you want to. I want to.”

He murmured, leaning his body a bit into yours as his hands slowly tugged the clothing off of you, hand slipping into your drenched panties, running thick, calloused fingers through your folds.

Your breath caught, eyelids flickering shut just a bit as you felt his finger slip into your cunt, only testing the waters, as he soon scissored one more in—then another—and everything was a blur of motion and movement.

All of a sudden, you were up against the wall of the dressing room, a certain Alex Mason holding you up with mesmerizing ease, fingers all of a sudden slipping out of you as quick as they’d come.

A pathetic whining sound left you, something you’d surely be embarrassed about later, or not, at the sudden loss of sensation.

“Easy, hon,” Alex cooed to you, his gentle voice a direct opposite of the way he harshly tugged his cock out of his boxers, and glancing down through hazy vision, you swallowed thickly.

Thick, not bad length-wise either, the tip weeping with pre-cum that he swiped away with his thumb before shifting, lining it up with your entrance.

His eyes met yours, looking for confirmation, and approval from you, and the little nod you gave was enough for him as he began slowly pushing in, a groan slipping from between his lips.

“Christ,” Mason cursed, brows furrowing as he slipped a finger to rub quick circles on your clit, eager to bring you the same pleasure he was feeling.

The warm intrusion of his dick in your cunt had you squirming, breathing out shaky breaths as your legs shook, pleasure lighting your nerves up as you threw your head back.

He began shallow little thrusts, the way his thighs shook telling you he wouldn’t last long either. You could’ve sworn he was letting out the tiniest little whimpers, his eyes shutting tightly, finger rubbing harder, faster on your clit, not giving you any mercy.

“Too much, I can’t—“

Too much too fast, the floodwaters built until the levees broke, and your orgasm came all too rapidly for you, your cunt clamping down around Alex as he let out a sharp, “Fuck!”, and then both of you were shaking.

His mouth was on yours, whether out of desire or the simple need to keep the both of you quiet, you weren’t sure but didn’t find the energy to care anyway.

After a few minutes, finally, he separated from you, gently pulling out and setting you down on the floor. You had to lean against the wall, gathering your clothes off of the changing room’s floor, and slipping your shirt on.

Your pants, however, were a different ordeal. After struggling to move your nearly numb legs into the holes, Alex cleared his throat, already having gotten himself back in order, and helped you into them.

After you’d gotten dressed, both of you just looked at each other for a moment and must’ve had the same thought, because you simply readjusted your hair, and he motioned to the door.

The walk back home was silent. You didn’t ask about who would handle the body, didn’t want to know more than you had to, and he seemed to prefer it that way.

Once you both got home, you took a shower, savoring the way the hot water burned away the sweat of the day, and soothed your aching throat from being constricted. You couldn’t help but wonder if the thing with Mason, the quick fuck, if it had been a mistake or not.

However, as you slipped into bed that night, clothed in some warm pajamas Alex must’ve stolen from the shop when you hadn’t been looking, you felt someone slip into your bed, warm arms cradling you and the familiar scent of pine and snow, you knew that your question was answered.

[thesoftboiledegg]

THE REVOLUTION

I’m back, libsharts. Every year, you fall for my brilliant social experiments where I trick you into thinking that I’m gay when, in fact, I’m so hetero that I can jack to Rick and still be straight. That’s right, Tumblr: I can jack it to a MAN and it’s STILL NOT GAY. You think just anybody could do that? Hell, I can fantasize about Rick giving it to Bill Nye the Science Guy and still think that I’m straight!

But you idiots can’t. Every day, one of you gets on Tumblr and posts “Rick is gay” and the rest of you spend an hour high-fiving each other and going “So true, bestie! Rick IS gay! Suck it, dudebros!” while listening to whatever turd Lana Del Rey just shat out and crying at Whole Foods because they’re out of non-GMO raisins or whatever you freaks eat for breakfast.

But this ends today.

I’m taking matters into my own hands, just like Rick Sanchez would. Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman are going to smile at me from heaven (or hell, whatever) as I turn Rick and Morty into the science show again. I’m going to make it so science-y that you won’t be able to comprehend it. You couldn’t handle 30 seconds on Elon Musk Twitter where we talk about engineering and technology and I retweet that picture of him shirtless on a boat over and over.

NO MORE will you Tumblrinas say that Rick is gay!!!!! NO MORE!!!!!!!

Anyway, you’re going to cry hysterically when you see this email that I sent the Adult Swim office. “Sorry” if I offend your delicate sensibilities (spoiler alert: I’m not sorry), but someone had to man up, and it’s going to be me. I really let them have it, just like Rick gives it to Bill Nye the Science Guy in my dreams when I take Ambien, and also when I don’t take Ambien. Face the facts, LIEberals!

—

Dear Adult Swim,

I’m Steve White, and it’s time for us to talk. I’m sure you know me because I follow the Rick and Morty Instagram account and comment on every picture of Rick with “it's getting hot in here 🥵🌶️🔥so take off all your clothes 👖🥼🧪”. I’ve been watching Rick and Morty since the start–OK, I started watching midway through season five, but it doesn’t matter because I understand the show better than the girlies, normies and NPCs in your audience.

You need to listen to me because I’m a REAL fan. I’m going to break us out of this simulation! And I know it’s a simulation because the real Dan Harmon would never let Rick and Morty go to shit like this. Once, it was a show for straight white tech geniuses like me. Now, it’s a woke commie pukefest that might as well end every episode with Rick saying “Oh boy, which guy will I rail next?”, putting that image in my head for the next ten hours.

But this ends today.

What the fuck is Birdrick? Who the fuck is Mr. Nimbus? Huh?? Like I don’t have enough dreams about Rick and muscular men!

Fortunately for you, I’ve got some suggestions that will bring the show back to its former glory. Read it and weep, fuckwads:

Every episode should start with a mathematical problem that the viewer has to solve before they’re allowed to watch it. I know this is hard to wrangle with cable TV, so you’ll have to pull it off the air and show it exclusively on a streaming service that also shows SpaceX liftoffs, Elon Musk interviews and episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy. Someone can’t figure it out? Too bad! No Rick and Morty for you, dumbshit.

There should be a scene where Rick looks at the audience with a single tear rolling down his face like that Crying Indian ad from the 70s and says “My God, what has this show become? Why have the writers destroyed my intellect? I can’t do this anymore! I’m breaking free of the simulation!” He gets into a Tesla and runs over animated versions of all the writers, then sees Bird Person walking across the street and floors it. Feathers fly everywhere.

Same goes for the rest of the homos. Mr. Nimbus? Dead. The dragon? Dead. No more queers! If I wanted to see homo shit, I’d watch more gay porn.

I get a post-episode talk show called Talking Rick where I share my valuable insights. To make this work, you’ll have to send me every episode early so that I can review it ahead of time. I know that��s extra work for you guys, but I bring an intellectual, nihilistic, science-based perspective that some Tumblrina dipshit with eyeball tattoos can’t begin to fathom. I’m sure that Tesla will sponsor it, so you won’t have to pay me anything. Let’s get it on the go!

The series finale reveals that Rick is Morty from the future and Evil Morty is C-137’s original Morty. Those are my original ideas that no one’s ever had before. Jot them down, I say! Jot them down!

Each season should have one episode where Rick hosts a talk show (also called Talking Rick) where real-life scientists play animated versions of themselves and discuss scientific concepts that normies can’t even begin to understand. The first guest should, of course, be Elon Musk. In fact, he should show up in every episode. Other scientists can appear, but they must bow when they see him, never make eye contact and say “Very good, sir” whenever he asks one of them to get on the floor so that Elon can use him as a human ottoman.

Rick should have sex with eight guys at once.

HAHA ignore that last one, some Tumblrina found my laptop while I was in the Spencer’s back room taking a piss. I thought it was the bathroom, but apparently it’s not? Weird, it smells so much like urine in there. Anyway, Rick should have sex with eight guys at once.

I mean in the show, not just in general.

The other day, I heroically punted a Pickle Rick pillow like a football over a McDonald’s counter, causing mass chaos in the establishment. Some guy recorded me and uploaded the video on YouTube with the title “RICK AND MORTY FAN GOES BUCK WILD IN MCDONALDS!!!!! 🤣🤣😂😂🤯🤯😲😲” Now, whenever I’m in public, people point at me and go “Hey look, it’s the Rick and Morty freak!” I request compensation for the free marketing, thank you.

I expect you to take all these ideas into consideration and implant them in the show. I know it’s a lot to take in, but Rick and Morty needs to return to its former glory, and the only way to do that is to ream the Tumblrites into submission. Remember that song you played back in season one (the BEST season), “X is going to give it to you”? Well, X is going to give it to them. And X is Rick. He reams dudes–and by dudes, I mean hot chicks–left and right. But not them. NEVER the Tumblewads. Because in the end, Rick is saving it all for me.

Sincerely,

The Real-life Rick “Pickle Rick” Musk-Sanchez (Steve White) 🥒

Those cucks at Adult Swim didn’t get back to me–but little did they know, I had another ace up my sleeve. Deep down, somebody on the staff has to know that I’m right. I knew I had to make a scientific diagram that spoke to his repressed intellect. This is going to get pretty technical, so maybe avert your eyes so you don’t pop a few neurons.

STILL no response. By this point, I was getting pretty fed up, so I decided to vent in my Elon Musk Discord server. One of the guys stupidly said “Those emails were pretty gay” and I said “No they weren’t” and another guy said “All you ever do is say gay shit and leave” and I said “No I don’t” and another guy said “Dude, why is Rick bottoming in your drawing” and I said “Haha! I was fucking with all of you! It was another social experiment! I’m playing 3D chess like Elon! Why do you always fall for these? It’s a ploy to show off my intellect! While you’re ringing up boba teas and avocado body pillows at Target, I’m going to be working as Elon’s personal servant at Tesla and REFILLING JUSTIN ROILAND’S DOGGY DISH!!!!”

I got banned from the Elon Musk server again, and I think it’s for good this time. They can’t handle the truth. Adult Swim can’t. You obviously can’t. But if it takes the rest of my life, I’m going to restore Rick and Morty to its former glory. And if I die before that happens, well…at least I’ll rest easy knowing that Dan Harmon is sobbing uncontrollably at my gravesite.

Wait, what’s the official Adult Swim email address, anyway?

[aloysiavirgata]

Hi, I’m somehow new to your work and just floored by your skill as a writer.

If you’re taking prompts: high holy days, aurora borealis, npr. I love UST/early relationship, but happy to read anything you write.

Thsnk you! Shana tovah! 🍎🍯

Pusher in a coma. He’s taken up enough of their time and it’s after Valentine’s Day but before Easter, so they sit in a liminal diner at 2 AM.

Scully has lovely hands; Jane Austen would have mentioned Scully’s fine white hands and their pink oval nails. He listened to an NPR special once about pianists, about how their hands are analogous to the tiny bodies of gymnasts, to the way swimmers’ arms reach for the horizon.

The waitress comes and he says Western omelet and she says Greek salad. It is nearly rote at this point.

“The gun,” she murmurs, a cantrip in time. He hears it read backwards to the moment the trigger clicked.

He says Scully, no.

Mulder, yes.

The High Holy Days for his mother’s people are in the fall. The harvest season, when we must reap the fullness of our sowing. But Scully’s cold god rules from winter until spring, in the dead times. He is the god of death and then rebirth and Pusher, dead-alive in the thin hospital sheets.

Mulder blinks hard.

“The gun,” she says again, “Mulder I thought-“

He shakes his head. “Don’t.”

She doesn’t.

Their food comes. Cheap, mediocre food under cheap, mediocre lights.

Scully’s eyes luminescent in her alabaster face. Scully’s eyes like the aurora borealis in the deepest, white winter.

[onlymurdersintheafterparty]

OMITB S4:E6 “Blow Up”

YOU GUYS I AM SHOOK. THIS EPISODE WAS A WHOLE ROLLERCOASTER AND SINCE THE EPISODE ENDED MENTALLY I FEEL LIKE I’VE STEPPED OFF THE RIDE WITH MY LEGS FEELING LIKE JELLY

There are so many things to unpack that I’m just going to focus on the top 2 moments that had me shook and then a new theory after the reveal in the last few minutes of the episode.

Spoilers Ahead (I’m serious watch the episode first because of all the episodes to get spoiled this one will really have you messed up)

“I’m Watching You” / Double Murders

This is what had me mentally screaming because what do you mean Dudenoff has been dead this entire time and Sazz was right about there being another murderer in the building?! And the handwriting in the texted pic is the same as the one in the first season that appeared before Winnie was poisoned. Now before this episode a LOT of people theorized this very plot about a unsolved murder or cold case so I’m sure they feel vindicated after this episode. Many people think that it’s Lester who is the mastermind and I’m sure are even more suspicious now because he used to be an actor while others think it’s Uma. I agree with the first group and think it's Lester and I think his accomplice is Marshall P. Pope the writer.

Evidence Against Lester

He was homeless and out of work when he started working at The Arconia; After being hired he could have met Dudenoff in the lobby at some point and while talking film/acting, he could have mentioned being homeless and was brought into the $200 rent scheme and temporarily lived in the West Wing; It would also give him free reign of The Arconia after hours

As doorman, he has access to the different units; delivering the wrong mail gives him a chance to snoop or bug apartments because anyone passing him in the halls will just assume he's doing his job

As an actor, he could have worked with or was taught by Dudenoff

His son is an actor and Lester paid for the classes so where did the extra money come from?

He could be resentful of Charles because he's a successful actor living in a fancy building meanwhile he's stuck as a doorman; Charles being awkward could have been read as rudeness adding to that resentment (Vince thought Charles hated him because of their awkward window encounters)

People constantly bring up Lester returning Charles' hat in season one and it makes me wonder if he's ever impersonated Charles. They both have white hair, I'm not sure about the similarity in physical builds and height because of Lester's uniform and hat, but I've always had a sneaking suspicion someone has been posing as Charles here and there; Plus Charles doesn't really interact with his neighbors like that so if Lester disguised himself as Charles and wore a hat and hid his face no one would know or be shocked at him not saying hi back. And because Charles is friends with Oliver and Mabel, that would allow him to bug their apartments as well because they'd expect Charles to randomly visit his friends

In the 70s after the brothel got shut down, I'm sure the rent prices dropped drastically making it affordable for Dudenoff to purchase the entire floor

Lester killing Dudenoff would give him access to all those apartments and with the money from his side hustle, he can afford to pay off the police or whoever else he needs to keep the trio off his trail

Being homeless would have allowed him to meet some interesting people and if the alcoholism ever led to him serving any period of jail time he could have met criminals that became friends and allies to help do footwork behind the scenes over the past few seasons

This could also be how he got access to the poison in the attempt to kill Winnie

He could have killed Dudenoff out of revenge because he was promised a role that was rescinded or in a parallel to Ben and Charles, he was unfairly fired and held a grudge

Evidence Against Marshall

The biggest theory is that Marshall stole someone's script. I do agree with this theory but I don't think it was Sazz he stole it from, I think it was Lester

Marshall is a fan of the podcast so maybe at some point between seasons he went to go see the Arconia for himself; To get inside he'd have to go through Lester; If they got to talking about the podcast and films/screenwriting in general, Lester who was already spying on the trio could have by then written a film script in hopes of making a comeback; Lester has no connections from being out of work so he and Marshall come up with some sort of deal where Marshall will pitch the script and get Lester cast in the film;

Was Marshall a student of Dudenoff as well? That could be another connection between the two and instead of visiting The Arconia for the podcast he could have been in town to visit Dudenoff and bonded with Lester over that

Marshall knows how to do disguises but who could he impersonate that would actually be believable? I have no clue

If Marshall and Lester are accomplices there's a chance Marshall will be killed off before the season is over in an attempt to keep him from telling the truth

Dudenoff's Students:

Trina and Tawny

Vince Fish

Rudy Thurber

Sauce Family (unconfirmed)

Helga (unconfirmed)

Lester (unconfirmed)

Marshall (unconfirmed)

Other Observations:

I think Jan knows who the killer is and that’s why she went into hiding after escaping prison. As long as she’s lived in the Arconia I’m sure she’s seen some stuff plus game recognizes game so if she encountered another killer I’m sure she’d suspect it.

If Oliver is the second one targeted I wonder if Mabel is next; Jan did say that the killer would keep trying until they get it right

I don't think Howard is the Moriarty anymore and that it's definitely Lester

The Right Westie = Weird, Struggling Actors; The Westies pride themselves on being weird, outcasts and 2/5 are confirmed actors; Helga may have been run off or been paid off to leave and threatened to stay silent because she discovered Lester was impersonating Dudenoff and witnessed him cashing the checks

My attempt at an outline of what all went down with Lester & Dudenoff:

???? Lester becomes homeless and loses acting jobs because of alcoholism

???? Lester gets a job at The Arconia

???? Dudenoff teaches Rudy & Vince at some point

2011 Trina and Tawny meet Dudenoff in his film class; Notice that at first they're only filmed from the back and when we see through Dudenoff's lens, we only see what's within the lens so if the killer was in attendance they weren't seen onscreen

2012 Dudenoff gives the twins his cameras

2018* Dudenoff is killed (three years prior to pilot)

*the twins say the last time they spoke to him was three years ago and that he cut off communication because they moved to LA; Just because they didn't hear from him doesn't mean he actually died 3 years ago; No body = no way of checking the time of death

2021-2022 The trio's apartments are bugged at some point

Remaining Questions:

Who is the person in the Westie group pic with the scratched out face?

How long have the apartments been bugged?

If Dudenoff is dead, who has been impersonating him when addressing new tenants?

Does Dudenoff having replacement joints mean he was a stuntman as well? That would be yet another example of double identities this season

How long was the incinerator broken?

How long has Lester worked at The Arconia?

If Vince's pink eye is so contagious how did Eugene and Charles not get it despite being in close proximity?

If I missed anything from the first 2 seasons or got something wrong please let me know because I need my info as accurate as possible to figure this all out lol